RANT . Very poor install experience. 10 hours and just got it working.
I waited until I had calmed down and edited this post. Originally it
was written on Sunday April 12.
This is a rant and there are bug reports due to my issues. Some are
automatic from the install issues and others created or to be created by me.
I have been working on this laptop all weekend but all the re-install
issues are from today(Sunday).
Laptop that was running F21 with a dual boot. All of a sudden Fedora
wouldn't boot. Three kernels in the grub list but none would boot. For
some reason, the /boot/efi partition couldn't be mounted when booting
into Fedora. It could be related to the bug I reported about not being
able to mount vfat partitions from rescue mode.
Grub would let me boot into rescue mode but then it wouldn't allow me to
mount vfat partitions. I submitted a bug on this.
Bug 1210551
Since that time, I have tried to re-install F21 onto the system. We
prefer KDE so I downloaded the KDE spin and tried that. Multiple
attempts with failures in each case. I will be submitting a bug
report(s) on the issues. I have pictures to show that the install was
stuck but still telling me that the install was complete.
Downloaded the normal 64 bit workstation install image, and tried that.
Two failures at least and one automatic bug created on the second
crash. First crash just froze the machine.
Bug 1158975
In all cases, it looks like the issue is related to partitioning the
drive. As this is a dual boot with Windows 8.1 secure boot (worked
before F20 to F21 using fedup) I was not expecting any issues as F21 as
it is better and ran better on this machine than F20.
Due to the windows install, the drive has partitions that are windows
related and cannot be moved or are hidden. Thus have to be worked
around. The Linux partitions are in the middle of the Windows partitions.
Second, I hate LVM. Have lost data in the past due to LVM so I won't
use it again unless I need to have the flexibility of LVM. EXT4 all the
way.
I wanted to use the present partitions so I just tried to use them again
as I have in the past. The Installer didn't recognize them as being an
installed version. In the past, the installer would ask if I wanted to
repair the installed version of Linux. No joy. I tried to delete the
partitions with the installer partition program and reformat them using
the partition program. This is where it seemed to freeze on multiple
attempts. I have a photo of the screen showing that two partitions are
assigned the same number. It will be in the bug report. This happened
with both the KDE and the Gnome installs so it is related to both
installers.
I feel that the installer needs to be more like gparted so you can use
all the space. I now have blank spaces due to the installer
partitioning program.
In the one case where the Gnome workstation install reported that it was
complete, the reboot grub menu still had the old kernels from the
previous install which wouldn't work.
I ended up using a live install to delete the partitions, and create a
BTFS partition with the blank space to ensure there was nothing there
using gparted (yum install in the live image). Removed the EFI/fedora
directories from the system and then tried to install again with the KDE
live. Failure!. One failure with the Gnome installer. The second
attempt with the Gnome install finally worked and is now updating. Hours
yet to get it up and configured for tomorrow morning for my son's school
day. Install KDE, KVM, and applications etc. Configure the system by
morning. It is going to be a late night.
At least his user directory is still there one of the partitions that I
didn't want to delete. Data was backed up to a USB stick just in case.
Yes, I am frustrated as I have said to many that Fedora is easy to
install and I am not drunk enough to not care. :) Now to submit bug
reports.
Robin