Description of problem: Booted FC 18 alpha Live System from USB memory stick on 64-bit Intel x86. Trying to do Install to Hard Disk. My wireless hardware not found, so no network access (not sure if it matters). This wireless is OK in FC 17. Picked Manual Partitioning. Bottom left corner says: available space: 3.46 Mb (megs) total space: 476.94 Gb (gigs) I already have FC 14, 15, 16, 17 on this computer. I have an empty partition already setup for FC 18 (it is known as Spare5 to the existing FCs). It has been formatted as ext4 and is 4.14 Gb big. Clicking '+' to add new mount point to New Fedora 18 installation gets me a popup. I fill in '/' as the mount point. I have tried various things in the Desired Capacity field (such as: 4.14 Gb), but nothing appears to be valid. I get no option to pick the existing Spare5 partition as / So, quit installation.
Please retry this with the Beta TC8 Live image (http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/18-Beta-TC8/Live/x86_64/). Remember that this is pre-Beta, so make sure to have your data backed up first.
See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=870430#c5 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 870430 ***
Tried the suggested beta. System now finds my wireless card and network. The first screen I see is: Installation summary The Storeage area has a ! warning along with Automatic parititioning selected. I do NOT want automatic partitioning. I want to set / to an existing ext4 formatted partion. I believe that the ! warning is due to having only 3.46 Meg (not Gig) of free disk space.
Does this work? 1. Select INSTALLATION DESTINATION under STORAGE. 2. Select the disk. Click CONTINUE. 3. On Installation Options popup, select "Let me review & customize the partitioning of the disks anyway". Click Continue. 4. Expand "Unknown" and/or the older Fedora installations to find the desired partition, and select it. 5. set the mountpoint (near the top on the right side) 6. click the "Customize" expander on right side of screen 7. choose a filesystem type 8. activate the "Reformat" checkbutton 9. click on "Apply Changes" button
The screens and popups did not match those instructions. However, I made my best guess and it appears something was written to the hard disk. One of the buttons I clicked said "Reclaim" which sounded like the wrong thing to do, but it was the only button I could click. No where in that process did I see an option as to where I wanted the boot loader; I am used to the choice of MBR or /boot. I hope this process has not destroyed my MBR that is supposed to go to the IBM Boot Manager -- which lets me pick Windows, Solaris, or FC14, 15, 16, or 17. Now for a reboot to see what was just done.
The system boots. But, it boots FC 18 instead of the IBM Boot Manager. So, the MBR was overwritten. With other tools (DFSee) I can change the MBR to boot the IBM Boot Manager partition. But, I assume something needs to be done to the FC 18 / partition so it is bootable (before I alter the MBR). What?
Are your other Fedora partitions bootable (fdisk -l)? If so, I'd make the Fedora 18 partition bootable. I don't know anything about IBM Boot Manager so I can't help beyond that.
Yes, the other Fedora partitions are bootable from the IBM Boot Manager (BM). However, once I altered the MBR to point to the IBM BM, when I tried to boot FC 18, it said that the partition was not formated. The other Fedoras still booted. So, I booted FC 15 (which as GRUB, instead of GRUB2). I added FC 18 to the /boot/grub/grub.conf file using the information from FC 18 /boot. I booted FC 18 via the FC 15 grub boot menu. Once FC 18 was up, I did: su - GRUB_DEFAULT=saved grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg grub2-install --force --boot-directory=/boot /dev/sda5 I then could boot FC 18 from the IBM BM menu. I believe that the key item is to have the grub2-install write the boot code to /boot instead of the MBR. The only issue I see now is the install to the hard disk from the Live system alters the MBR and appears to give no way to install the boot code to /boot
OK, that makes sense. I don't think that it fits this bug report. I suggest looking for one about no longer being about to select the location of the boot loader. If there isn't one, I suggest filing a new bug report.