Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 77030
Installer won't modify an existing install, will only start over or do upgrade of existing packages
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:48:03 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826 Description of problem: If an installation of redhat is messed up (see bug 77020), or you somehow didn't install any text editors and can't modify the config files on your machine, the installer can't fix the installation. All it will do is perform an automatic upgrade, or make you start from scratch by deleting all existing partitions. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Reproduce bug 77020, then try to fix it. Actual Results: I had to wipe away the install and start over. Luckily I had only put in an hour's worth of setup. If this had been in production use sever data loss would have resulted. Why does the installer insist on blowing away all existing partitions? Why can't the installer add/remove packages from an existing installation? Expected Results: The installer should a) let you use existing partitions b) let you modify an existing install c) let you resintall the kernel/boot loader
Mostly a dupe of bug 76947. You will want to use redhat-config-packages to handle an existing installation. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 76947 ***
In what way is this a dupe of bug 76947? That bug is about how an upgrade fouled up the boot loader. This is about how the install/upgrade disks don't let you install over an existing install. And redhat-config-packages only works if a) it is installed and b) you can use X and c) I don't think installing a boot loader should be a part of redhat-config-packages, whereas it already is part of the installer. BTW what does redhat-config-kickstart do? I can't tell because I can't run X.
It is a dupe because the other bug is about the fact that you are not given a chance to rewrite a bootloader if you do an upgrade and the kernel is not installed (because you're running it on an upgraded system). If you installed such a stripped down system you cannot run our userland tools then you're only option is to reinstall or do it manually. If you would like to open a bug against redhat-config-packages that it should have a text-mode interface that might address your concerns. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 76947 ***