I installed a new 1G SCSI (ID4/sdb) alongside my old 8G unit (ID0/sda) which contained a root fs and a mirror of ftp.redhat.com. I wanted to install 6.1 on the new disk. I selected ``Local hard disk'' to install from and gave the installer a path to the package files: sda:/home/ftp/Mirrors/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.1/i386 So far, so good. The installer reads the package information OK. I tell the installer I wish to install a ``Server distribution'' and let it run. The installer then proceeds to repartition sda---the disk with the package files on it!!! This is very brain-dead of it. Now I have lost my original Red Hat installation *and* also the means to re-install it. This may also happen on Sparc but I have no desire to test it. Grrrr. /.J
The Server installation will delete and make use of all drives and partitions available to it, and therefore you lost the source files and the original installation. This behavior (reformatting all of the drives) is the expected and programmed behavior of the Server-class installation.
Excuse me, since when has the source media ever been a valid target for installation???? This may be the ``programmed behaviour'', in which case your (sorry, Red Hat's) logic is faulty. This behaviour makes the combination of Server-class install from Local Hard Disk impossible. The very least you could do would be to document this properly, but I suspect it would be rather much easier to have the installer warn you of the dangers instead. /.J
Page 20 of the 6.1 Installation Guide says that a sever-class installation will remove "ALL existing partitions of ANY type on ALL existing hard drives on your system." Flipping a little further to page 40 shows "A server-class installation will erase all partitions (both Linux and non-Linux) from every one of your computer's hard drive(s)." Yes, you are correct that this behavior prevents performing a server-class installation from hard drive, but this is actually a better proposition. The point of a server installation is to prepare a system for use as a server, so the server-class installation is designed to make use of all drive space on the machine. This was the desired behavior people wanted, so this is how the server-class installation works. The custom-class installation would allow you to preserve the source files as you wish.