confusion about pre upgrade and /boot partition

[Scott Robbins]

I tried to run pre upgrade today and got an error message that my /boot
partition was too small.  The message that it could download the file
during installation if I had an ethernet connection. 

Rather than go through the whole thing, I stopped it and began to google
and to bugzilla, if there is such a word.  

The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if the /boot
partition is too small.  My /boot partition is about 100 MB or so.  I
removed all older kernels and left the minimum in there.  However, more
googling indicated the image it will need is actually over 100 MB. 

So, I am not sure if it would eventually fail or not if I try to go the
preupgrade route.  This was from an F10 install, which probably had a
default /boot of 100, but I could be wrong about that, I'm not sure if I
manually did the partitioning or not.  

If that is correct, I wonder if it would better to have a more emphatic
message--the message was a bit ambiguous to me, not really stating if it
would fail later, even if the image is downloaded, if the /boot
partition is too small. 

I only gave it about 5 minutes on google, so stopped after the first few
hits, many of which were older, so I'm not sure if this is still the
case or not.  

Thanks for any clarification. 

-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Willow: Oz is a werewolf. 
Buffy: It's a long story. 
Oz: Got bit. 
Buffy: But obviously not that long.

[Jeremy Katz]

On Tuesday, May 26 2009, Scott Robbins said:
>  The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if the
> /boot
>  partition is too small.  My /boot partition is about 100 MB or so.  I
>  removed all older kernels and left the minimum in there.  However, more
>  googling indicated the image it will need is actually over 100 MB.  
I'm pretty sure the image will get downloaded at upgrade-time if you
don't have enough space in /boot.  But you need enough space for the
kernels you have installed + the kernel, initrd and installer images
which is a bit bigger.
 
>  So, I am not sure if it would eventually fail or not if I try to go
> the
>  preupgrade route.  This was from an F10 install, which probably had a
>  default /boot of 100, but I could be wrong about that, I'm not sure if I
>  manually did the partitioning or not.   
The default /boot as of Fedora 10 (and maybe Fedora 9, but I'd have to
go back and git annotate and I'm lazy :-) was 250 megs

Jeremy

[Scott Robbins]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 09:09:03PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
>  On Tuesday, May 26 2009, Scott Robbins said:
>  > The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if the /boot
>  
>  I'm pretty sure the image will get downloaded at upgrade-time if you
>  don't have enough space in /boot.  But you need enough space for the
>  kernels you have installed + the kernel, initrd and installer images
>  which is a bit bigger. 
Ah, so it would fail then.  Maybe the message could be a bit less
ambiguous, like, "Hey stupid... you didn't plan ahead did ya?  Forget
it." 

Hrrm, maybe not quite that unambiguous.  :)

>   
>  > .  This was from an F10 install, which probably had a
>  > default /boot of 100, but I could be wrong about that, I'm not sure if I
>  > manually did the partitioning or not.  
>  
>  The default /boot as of Fedora 10 (and maybe Fedora 9, but I'd have to
>  go back and git annotate and I'm lazy :-) was 250 megs 
No, I think you're right, or at least 200--I really don't remember the
circumstance of the first install--I think I was in a rush but didn't
want LVM so probably took 100 out of habit.  

Thanks very much for the quick answer. 


-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Cordelia: You're really campaigning for bitch of the year, aren't
you? 
Buffy: As defending champion, you nervous? 
Cordelia: I can hold my own.

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 05/27/2009 06:57 AM, Scott Robbins wrote:
>  On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 09:09:03PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > On Tuesday, May 26 2009, Scott Robbins said:
> >> The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if the /boot
> >
> > I'm pretty sure the image will get downloaded at upgrade-time if you
> > don't have enough space in /boot.  But you need enough space for the
> > kernels you have installed + the kernel, initrd and installer images
> > which is a bit bigger.
>  
>  Ah, so it would fail then.  Maybe the message could be a bit less
>  ambiguous, like, "Hey stupid... you didn't plan ahead did ya?  Forget
>  it."  
It would fail if you don't have enough space in your hard disk apart
from /boot. There is a RFE filed already to improve the message

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478437

Maybe you can add your comments there.

Rahul

[Scott Robbins]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 06:59:54AM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  On 05/27/2009 06:57 AM, Scott Robbins wrote:
>  > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 09:09:03PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
>  >> On Tuesday, May 26 2009, Scott Robbins said:
>  >>> The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if the /boot
>  >>
>  >> I'm pretty sure the image will get downloaded at upgrade-time if you
>  >> don't have enough space in /boot.  But you need enough space for the
>  >> kernels you have installed + the kernel, initrd and installer images
>  >> which is a bit bigger.
>  > 
>  > Ah, so it would fail then.  Maybe the message could be a bit less
>  > ambiguous, like, "Hey stupid... you didn't plan ahead did ya?  Forget
>  > it." 
>  
>  It would fail if you don't have enough space in your hard disk apart
>  from /boot. There is a RFE filed already to improve the message
>  
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478437
>  
>  Maybe you can add your comments there. 
Now I'm confused again.  :) 

The first two responses indicate that if /boot doesn't have enough free
space, eventually, the upgrade will fail.  Your response indicates that
this is not the case. 

As it stands, I got the error message even after removing all old
kernels from /boot.  Also, as per my earlier posts, I'm under the
impression that you need about 116M or a bit more, free space in /boot
for various images to work successfully. 

I have plenty of free space on the hard drive, it's only /boot that is
limited.  

So, if I try preupgrade, /boot is on a separate partition, and has a
limited amount of space, but the remainder of the disk has plenty of
free space, will preupgrade fail or succeed?

I realize from the responses that, to my chagrin, I did what I accuse
newcomers of doing on the forum, and didn't give enough information in
the beginning.  /boot is limited. The rest of the disk, currently
holding the F10 installation, has close to 100 GB of free space.  The
rest of the disk is on a single / partition, which wasn't the best way
to do it, but I don't really remember if I had a reason or just missed
it during installation. 

I thank all of you for your patience and apologize for not being clear
in my earlier posts. 
 
(So, at this point, I don't want to comment on the bug, because I'm
still not quite sure what the message should be.)

(I'll be going to sleep shortly, so may not respond again till
tomorrow.)

Once again, thanks to all.



-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

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from the males of the species, and I have nothing but contempt 
for the whole libidinous lot of them. 
Xander: Then why are you talking to me? 
Anya: I don't have a date for the prom. 
Xander: Well, gosh, I wonder why not? It couldn't possibly have 
anything to do with your sales pitch. 
Anya: Men are evil. Will you go with me?

[Rick Stevens]

Scott Robbins wrote:
>  I tried to run pre upgrade today and got an error message that my
> /boot
>  partition was too small.  The message that it could download the file
>  during installation if I had an ethernet connection. 
>  
>  Rather than go through the whole thing, I stopped it and began to google
>  and to bugzilla, if there is such a word.  
>  
>  The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if the /boot
>  partition is too small.  My /boot partition is about 100 MB or so.  I
>  removed all older kernels and left the minimum in there.  However, more
>  googling indicated the image it will need is actually over 100 MB. 
>  
>  So, I am not sure if it would eventually fail or not if I try to go the
>  preupgrade route.  This was from an F10 install, which probably had a
>  default /boot of 100, but I could be wrong about that, I'm not sure if I
>  manually did the partitioning or not.  
>  
>  If that is correct, I wonder if it would better to have a more emphatic
>  message--the message was a bit ambiguous to me, not really stating if it
>  would fail later, even if the image is downloaded, if the /boot
>  partition is too small. 
>  
>  I only gave it about 5 minutes on google, so stopped after the first few
>  hits, many of which were older, so I'm not sure if this is still the
>  case or not.  
>  
>  Thanks for any clarification.  
The issue may be not that /boot is too small, but that you're using
/ (the root filesystem) for everything _including_ /boot.  In that
case, yup, you're going to run out of space PDQ (pretty damned quick).
On my laptop, for instance:

	[rick@golem3 ~]$ df -h
	Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
	/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
          	              76G   41G   31G  58% /
	/dev/sda3              92M   30M   58M  34% /boot
	tmpfs                1002M   76K 1002M   1% /dev/shm

Note that /boot and / are separate partitions, /boot is only 92MB
and that it's still 56% empty.

You can have /boot as part of the root filesystem if you want, but
you'll have to make sure the root filesystem is a type grub groks (and
that's ext2 or ext3 only at this time).  It can't be on an LVM volume
(as mine is) or be on something esoteric like a software RAID or XFS
filesystem, since the kernel has to be running to access those.

Remember that /boot only has to have enough space to hold the grub
loader stage 1.5 and stage 2 loaders, the grub.conf file, the kernel(s)
you plan to boot and their accompanying initrd images.  That's it.  /
(the root filesystem) has to have enough space to hold the kernel's
modules, system libraries and the stuff in /etc, /sbin and /bin.

So, take a careful look at the partition table again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks(a)nerd.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
-                                                                    -
-   Errors have occurred. We won't tell you where or why.  We have   -
-                         lazy programmers.                          -
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Scott Robbins]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 06:17:56PM -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
>  Scott Robbins wrote:
> > 

> > The impression I am getting is that it will eventually fail if
> the /boot
> > partition is too small.  My /boot partition is about 100 MB or so.  I
> > removed all older kernels and left the minimum in there.  However, more
> > googling indicated the image it will need is actually over 100 MB. 
> >
>
>  The issue may be not that /boot is too small, but that you're using
>  / (the root filesystem) for everything _including_ /boot.  In that
>  case, yup, you're going to run out of space PDQ (pretty damned quick).
>  On my laptop, for instance:
>
>  	[rick@golem3 ~]$ df -h
>  	Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>  	/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
>           	              76G   41G   31G  58% /
>  	/dev/sda3              92M   30M   58M  34% /boot
>  	tmpfs                1002M   76K 1002M   1% /dev/shm
>  
No, it is separate, and at present 

/dev/sda1              104M    38M    61M  39% /boot


As mentioned, in my earlier googling, it seemed that the new image will
require, at some point, about 116 MBs.  

Thanks for the further clarification. 


-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

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Except I seem to be British, don't I? Uh, and a man. With ... 
glasses. (removes glasses) Well, that narrows it down 
considerably.

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 18:17:56 -0700,
  Rick Stevens <ricks(a)nerd.com&gt; wrote:
>  You can have /boot as part of the root filesystem if you want, but
>  you'll have to make sure the root filesystem is a type grub groks (and
>  that's ext2 or ext3 only at this time).  It can't be on an LVM volume
>  (as mine is) or be on something esoteric like a software RAID or XFS
>  filesystem, since the kernel has to be running to access those. 
Software RAID 1 is an exception, since it is usable in a read only mode
without knowing about RAID.