From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040808 Firefox/0.9.3 Description of problem: clearpart --linux --drives=hda clears not only the linux partitions but ntfs partitions as well, when run via kickstart. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-10.2.0.48-1 How reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1.Copy partitioning information from the anaconda-ks.cfg that was generated during the previous install. 2. Install today's rawhide via a kickstart.cfg file. 3.Install proceeded without errors Actual Results: Found ntfs partition that was previously approx 5 gig and located on hda1 to be replaced with an approx 100 Meg linux partitionvolgroup Expected Results: ntfs partition should have been left intact and linux installed on the remainder of the drive. Additional info: This is the revelant part of the ks.cfg file as was generated by anaconda during the previous FC3 install: clearpart --linux --drives=hda part /boot --fstype "ext3" --size=100 --ondisk=hda part pv.3 --size=0 --grow --ondisk=hda volgroup VolGroup00 pv.3 logvol /home --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol05 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=5088 logvol /tmp --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol04 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=512 logvol /var --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol03 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024 logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol00 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024 logvol /usr/local --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol02 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=224 logvol swap --fstype swap --name=LogVol06 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024 logvol /usr --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol01 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=5024 The docs indicate that using the --linux switch in the clearpart command will rm the linux partitions. It says nothing about rm'ing the ntfs partitions. FWIW hardware is a dell inspiron 2650 laptop. I reinstalled XP and rawhide from scratch and looked at the resulting anaconda-ks.cfg and with the exception of the partition sizes and the following line they look the same. The first line was generated by the FC3 installer the 2nd was generated by today's rawhide installer: volgroup VolGroup00 --pesize=32768 pv.3 volgroup VolGroup00 pv.3 In addition XP was installed on hda1 before installing FC3 or rawhide.
Although this is probably going to be hard to tell now, could the ntfs partition have looked like a linux partition in parted? Do you happen to remember ever running it and noticing?
I never ran parted on it. If you tell me what parted commands you would like me to run I will run them and try the kickstart again. There is nothing on the machine so if I trash it again it is no problem. I do not know if it helps but from fdisk it was marked as an ntfs partition. Does parted use something different to tell if it is linux or not?
Run parted on the disk, type print. But it's probably too late to tell what was there before. parted actually (mostly) ignores the partition ids and instead looks at the signature of the filesystem on the disk. This is a bit safer in most circumstances as it's easy to get a partition id changed and most things just won't care. But every once in a while a funky filesystem comes along and screws up sniffing fs types :/
Sorry to bother you with this. Turns out the problem was operator error. Thanks for the help. At least I learned a little more about how anaconda and kickstart work.