Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 213160
anaconda's reboots when swap is already enabled
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:47 EST
Description of problem: swap is already enabled by hand. anacondo tries to enable swap, fails, and reboots the machine! Are you guys stupid or just mean-spirited????! What, you can't check to see if the swap partition is enabled???? And this after spending an hour clicking on a custom configuration, which, you refuse to save! Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): FC6 How reproducible: Every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1.start swap by hand after error message about no swap space. 2. 3. Actual results: Another wasted hour of time. Expected results: Who knows? Additional info: This is a hard drive install, since NFS does not work.
We expect that we're going to do all of the mounting of filesystems (including enabling swap) ourselves. Why are you having to do otherwise?
There was an error message that came up, something about "There is not enough memory. We will have to re-write your partition table now. Is that ok?" Well, _no_, it's not ok! Don't touch my partition table. And, _no_, the partition table doesn't have anything to do with the swap partition. So, I just enable swap by hand. Now, I just have to _disable_ it by hand before this fragile re-enable of swap by anaconda. So, why do you want to argue about it? Why can't you just check to see if swap is enabled? Or just start the install anyway when there is enough memory? This is just another of a seeming infinitude of pointless conditions that cause an install to fail.
Do you mean this message: As you don't have much memory in this machine, we need to turn on swap space immediately. To do this we'll have to write your new partition table to the disk immediately. Is that OK? We can't enable swap until we have the partition table written to disk. And that has to happen if you've configured your partitions in anaconda. But I have to go with Jeremy here... anaconda expects to do everything. If you do something behind its back, don't expect that it'll know about it. Why are you enabling swap by hand? You should never have to do that. Anaconda will do that for you automatically. Perhaps you could describe your installation scenario in more detail so we can understand how you are trying to install.
There is no point in discussing this if you don't respond to what I said. Let me say it again: DO NOT TOUCH MY PARTITION TABLE! and similarly, DO NOT THREATEN TO TOUCH MY PARTITION TABLE! Now, notice that the anaconda installer has an option for customizing the partition table. You can't have it both ways - If there are configurable selections in the installer, then the installer should not break if someone actually uses them. Otherwise, simply remove _all_ the configuration options in the installer, and I can look for another linux distribution.
You are being way more hostile than necessary. If your bug report is simply going to be "don't touch the partition table", then I'll have to close this as WORKSFORME because, frankly, you are being less than helpful in actually reporting the issue.
Yes, and way more upset and frustrated than necessary. Oh, I have to assume that we both understand the issue. I don't want anaconda changing my partition table, and you don't want to add a line to check for swapspace. You might as well close the bug. The fragility of anaconda is the kind of thing I might normally ascribe to inexperienced student programmers, but - hey - it's your software.