Description of problem: To avoid potential problems from possible dvd device incompatibility, I try installing from hard disk. It fails. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-12.46 How reproducible: Easy. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create hard disk ext2 partition using a distribution that works well (say PCLinuxOS, not Fedora of course), say sda4, and copy dvd install disk image to it. 2. Boot from a device (say cdrom) with addition boot option of "askmethod" 3. Choose Hard Disk method and select partition and path to image Actual results: Appear to recognise the iso image ok, but the fails with several messages such as "Failed to read directory /mnt/runtime/etc" and "Failed to read directory /mnt/runtime/var" and "SELinux could not open policy file" Expected results: Should work Additional info: fc12 install is exceedingly difficult
It would appear that the "askmethod" boot option only partly works, and much of it is quite wrong. For example, when using "askmethod" and when one selects "Hard Disk" as the location of stage2, the prompt is "Directory holding image" but in actual fact one needs to select the actual image - not just the directory. Very confusing. Also, nowhere in Fedora documentation (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/fedora-install-guide-en/fc4/sn-installing-from-harddrive.html)is it mentioned that the target of "askmethod" is actually a stage2 image, normally named install.img. This must be manually extracted from the Fedora-12-i386-DVD.iso and placed on the partition along with the full iso. But worse still, although the "askmethod" is effectively passed to anaconda as "opts.method", one isn't prompted as to where the sources might be. One would have though that if one is using a specific device for stage2 then that same device would more likely be the place where the packages are located. But no, that would be too sensible? Also, one Radek Rvykydel (rvykydal) appears to have submitted a dramatic patch in Sep 2009 which effectively deletes a whole lot of working code and substitutes broken code in its place. The only work-around appears to be to also pass a "repo=hd:/dev/sda4:/dir" boot option so that the Packages can be located. Common sense would lead one to believe that the "Hard Disk" location which is submitted for stage2 would be the sensible place to automatically look for the packages by default (not the CDROM as is currently the case). But surely, surely, in the interestes of simplicity, all one should need to do is point to the full iso and have the clever software dig inside of that iso and locate the install.img and the packages thereby killing two birds with the one stone. Otherwise, what is the point of making a dvd image available for download if using that image on anything but a cdrom is next to impossible without knowing a whole bunch of arcane boot parameters?
Please ignore/delete the above statement about Radek Rvykydel's patch - it isn't in anaconda-12.46. So perhaps it will actually cure the problem (but it isn't in anaconda-13 yet either).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 505880 ***