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Description of problem: The guide fails to clarify the three possibilities. While one might be able to figure out how to do an upgrade or a fresh install, there are no directions to "refresh" or reinstall the existing OS so as to reidentify new hardware, and still keep the data on the hard drive. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Fedora 16 How reproducible: Read guide Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
Thanks for pointing this out, KitchM. To prepare for a re-installation, you just need to place your user data on a separate home partition. I've updated the guide to reflect this, in the 'Upgrading an Existing System' section. See commit cd768e9d9c6799a32794e1eae13568d5d38ccc5b
There should be no need to move data if one is only refreshing OS files.
You should use `yum distro-sync` to "refresh" your package state, `rpm -Va` to check for altered packages, `yum reinstall` as needed, and so on. These are system maintenance tasks, not installation tasks. There are no recommendations at all to perform the procedure you're referring to, it's not the class of problem we advocate solving through the installation process.
I am absolutely sure that such options should be part of the main menu on the install CD. Everything should be in one place, regardless of the problem needing to be addressed by booting off of the CD. Please see that the responsible parties fix this issue.
(In reply to KitchM from comment #5) > I am absolutely sure that such options should be part of the main menu on > the install CD. Everything should be in one place, regardless of the > problem needing to be addressed by booting off of the CD. > > Please see that the responsible parties fix this issue. Hi, I'm not exactly sure what your goal is here. Can you elaborate? Is it that you have an existing Fedora installation, and you want to run the installation again so that the installer detects new hardware you added to the system and installs drivers for it? And do you want to keep the system intact otherwise, preserving your user data and installed software? Thanks, Petr
As mentioned above, there are at least three possibilities that need to be covered for any OS: 1. If there is a suspicion of corruption, one would like to reinstall all files that exist in the OS and installed programs. 2. If one wants to check for missing dependencies or other files, one may wish to install all missing files by having the install routine check for this state. 3. Reconfigure for changes in hardware. These should be separate menu items when booting from the CD. In each of these, there should be no personal files touched. After all, system files are not personal files and therefore would not be affected regardless where they exist. The one situation where that might come into play is if one wishes to reformat the partitions that contain the OS and program files. This eventuality can be taken care of by the original setup routine, where the user is told to create a partition for personal storage during that original process. We need a system whereby the problems of computer usage and/or human intervention can be easily rectified by booting from the install and/or recovery CD. This should not be a big deal since the majority of these mechanisms already exist somewhere. Instead, there are many problems that pop up for users that end up on forums and bug tracking systems, and all quite unnecessarily.