Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 421291
Installation wants to format bootsdrive
Last modified: 2008-01-02 11:40:40 EST
Description of problem: I just installed F8/i386 from scratch, booting from a usbstick using bootdisk.img. During installation, when being asked about formating the harddrive, anaconda also wanted to format the usbstick (/dev/sdb). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): F8-release Steps to Reproduce: 1. dd bootdisk.img to a usbstick 2. boot from usbstick and try to install F8 via network (I used ftp) Additional info: I am not sure if anaconda's attempt to formating/destroying the boot medium does actually destroys the installation (I answered no to formatting /dev/sdb) nor did I try to reproduce this), but it took me by surprise and doesn't seem reasonable to me that installation wants to destroy the installation medium.
Anaconda offers you the option of formatting any formattable media that it finds. It is up to the user to deslect applicable media when doing so would shoot themselves in the foot. Also, at that point, Anaconda is already loaded into RAM - everything that is need is on the initrd. Therefore, formatting the USB stick at that point would not be fatal.
Closing per previous comment. If you feel that this is incorrect, feel free to re-open this bug report.