12:19 p.m.
Since it's late April, with F13 due next month, I presume that
preupgrade must working, or about to start working, no? But I've seen
precious few posts here about it -- and in view of the things ordinary
updates seem to've been breaking lately, I'm a little spooky.
Any word on it?
--
Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck Not Quite Clueless Power User
I have precious (very precious!) little idea where up is.
7:33 p.m.
On 04/30/2010 05:31 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com
<mailto:metherid@gmail.com>> wrote:
On 05/01/2010 02:28 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> On
> ===================
>
> Isn't it now possible to revert to not using a /boot partition and
> having the full / space for installation?
No. Because while the latest GRUB in Fedora supports Ext4, it does not
support booting from LVM.
My /boot partition is 290 MB. Since the default is now 500MB is it
necessary that I resize? Will /swap be used if necessary? I have 2 GB of
Necessary? no. But you may have problems upgrading if you don't have
enough storage in /boot for whichever upgrade method you choose to use
during the upgrade.
Me? I recently deleted my LVMs and re-partitioned my F13 system with a
single / partitition (ext4) and a swap partition (instead of having a
/boot partition, now /boot is just a subdirectory of /.
Swap? Non-sequitor. /boot is file-system (disk) space. Swap is
virtual memory for RAM. They are not the same thing. It is possible to
put swap space in your filesystem, or have a separate swap partition on
your disk (or both, or multiple instances of either or both).
swap that have, I believe, never been used since I have 4 GB RAM.
Maybe
another formatting would have been preferable...
Swap gets used when your system gets busy enough to run out of RAM.
System memory is transient. It is used for programs and program data,
for I/O buffer space, and for allocated (heap) storage by your programs.
(Its even possible to create a RAM disk in your system memory.)
Be grateful that your system doesn't seem to need all the swap space you
have set-up. It will perform better than a system that constantly uses
its swap space (RAM I/O is faster than disk I/O).
Now, if you want to trade off some of your swap partition to add to your
/boot partition, that *may* be do-able if the are adjacent on the disk,
or are both allocated from Logical Volumes in the same Physical Volume.
If that is not the case, you may have to spend time moving things
around on your disk in order to be able to do that.
Or, with a back-up/restore, you could *swap* them on your disk. 2GB of
/boot space where your swap used to be, and 290MB of swap space since
you don't seem to need it very much. You can always add more swap space
later if you need it, either through another disk, another swap
partition, or a swap file.
--
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome(a)rcn.com
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net
cummings(a)kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)
10:38 p.m.
On 04/27/2010 03:19 AM, Beartooth wrote:
Since it's late April, with F13 due next month, I presume that
preupgrade must working, or about to start working, no? But I've seen
precious few posts here about it -- and in view of the things ordinary
updates seem to've been breaking lately, I'm a little spooky.
Any word on it?
I've been testing and have had problems with Fedora 13 x86-64.
It installs ok but produces an error message regarding faulty code in a
.py file which persists even after upgrading python after fresh install
from iso. This code fault can appear with no apps running, not even
screen saver and after a full upgrade to a working system.
Do not update or upgrade xorg-X11-anything as it stops the system from
completing boot at "loading atd".
I'm still trying to determine which of the xorg-X11 components is at
fault. I believe that it's something to do with xorg-X11-server-common
but have insufficient proof.
I stayed with nouveau and did not attempt nvidia installation.
Do not use PackageKit for upgrade, install or update it takes longer
(around 5-6 hours) to upgrade than yum (2-3 hours) and is
disappointingly lax with progress information. Stopping it kills the
system necessitating reinstall.
PackageKit will sit for hours after download completion with nill
indication of what is happening, it looks like it's stopped or finished.
This is dangerous as any attempt to do anything kills the system
requiring reinstall.
You need some 6 hours to spare.
Use <Applications><System Tools><System Monitor> to see visually that
it's using between 20 and 100 percent cpu time, 40 percent memory, nil
swap nil network movement.
Sometimes it will sit for an hour or more using 10-20 percent cpu time,
nothing else - do not touch anything during this process it will kill
the system.
With packagekit you can deselect unwanted components but it will install
them anyway. For instance, xorg-X11 drivers for about 20 video cards,
Bluetooth, a dozen foreign language fonts catalan, chinese, indian,
malay, tibetan, etc.
Printer selection system still does not work well.
For some reason Fedora still does not provide a method to connect to usb
printers since F10.
Its limited to network, serial, etc. Golly who uses serial printers
these days.
You will have to manually install the relevant PPD for your printer and
using the serial selections point it to the ppd file by redirecting the
device URI to usb:// what-ever-your-printer-is.
Yum and yumex, both no problems.
Multiple vertex selection in Blender is still very poor with nouveau but
the 3d has improved significantly.
Open Office, Scribus, Gimp all work seamlessly. Gutenprint and
Gimp-print work if the above is completed.
Due to having to reinstall so many times I have not tried other apps.
These are my findings, they may not be general.
The question: Why don't I report this through bugzilla.
1. I have to register while using the system a reinstall kills that
registration and I can't reregister or log in under the same details.
2. bugzilla has rejected several of my reports because I cannot include
appropriate debug information so I no longer bother. I use the apps, I
'm not technical expert.
Roger
12:08 a.m.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Kevin J. Cummings <
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net> wrote:
On 04/30/2010 05:31 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com
> <mailto:metherid@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On 05/01/2010 02:28 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> > On
> > ===================
> >
> > Isn't it now possible to revert to not using a /boot partition and
> > having the full / space for installation?
>
> No. Because while the latest GRUB in Fedora supports Ext4, it does
not
> support booting from LVM.
>
>
> My /boot partition is 290 MB. Since the default is now 500MB is it
> necessary that I resize? Will /swap be used if necessary? I have 2 GB of
Necessary? no. But you may have problems upgrading if you don't have
enough storage in /boot for whichever upgrade method you choose to use
during the upgrade.
I'm afraid there's a lot of stupid questions you'll have to forgive here,
but I'm completely lost.
As I said, I have 290 MB for /boot but, with the 3 past kernels installed, I
hardly use more that ¼ of it. When a new version of Fedora is installed, it
installs a new kernel and deletes, as usual, the oldest one. Why is much
space needed?
Me? I recently deleted my LVMs and re-partitioned my F13 system with
a
single / partitition (ext4) and a swap partition (instead of having a
/boot partition, now /boot is just a subdirectory of /.
It seems to me this makes sense, except I'd also have a /home partition. Say
you have a 20GB partition for / on a desktop. Is there really much chance
that it will one day get filled and that there will be no cruft to remove? I
mean on a desktop...!
When you can get a 1TB HD for less than $100, is there any sense in trying
to cut the 20GB to 10 GB and having to use LVM?
Wikipedia says:
On small systems (like a desktop at home), instead of having to guess how
big a partition needs to be, LVM allows you to resize your disk partitions
easily as needed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_%28Linux%29
Is LVM the default when you make a Fedora desktop installation? I hope not.
If it is, I believe I disabled it since, when I go into Logical Volume
Management, all partitions show: Uninitiated disk entity. Does LVM change
the way fstab looks?
Swap? Non-sequitor. /boot is file-system (disk) space.
This goes with what I asked here:
"When a new version of Fedora is installed, it installs a new kernel and
deletes, as usual, the oldest one. Why is much space needed? "
I thought maybe, when a new version of Fedora is installed, that some
compiling operation are needed that occupy a lot of space in the /boot
partition, and that /swap could be temporarily be used. I'm afraid this does
not make much sense. The problem is I can't figure out what does.
Now, if you want to trade off some of your swap partition to add to
your
/boot partition, that *may* be do-able if the are adjacent on the
disk,
They are not. Countrary to what is most commonly suggested, long ago, I took
the habit to put swap at the end of the disk so that each revolution of the
HD read/writes more sectors, making swap more efficient. /boot is at the
beginning of the disk.
But, since I believe I don't use LVM, is there any way I can get rid of the
ext3 boot partition and use a /boot directory in / without doing a
back-up/restore?
The whole section between equal signs will be qualified by most here as an
unnecessary rant. Don't feel obliged to read it.
=================
I sometimes feel Linux is entering a Babel tower state of providing
solutions to problems by explaining concepts. When I began using Linux,
things were supposed to be more complex for the user. Still, after some
limited basic reading, how things worked was quite evident. Now, as the OS
gets both more complex and user-friendly, I read the documentation and I'm
completely lost. I can't grasp the concepts.
And, as a matter of fact, it's not only Linux, it's all the technology
field. For instance, I recently bought a little voice recorder with buttons
all over the place interacting one with the others. The little manual that
comes with it is about 40 pages long and it took me about 3 hours to figure
out how everything worked. (Expsoing this simple matter will prove a bit
longish, but it's the best illustration I can think of.)
For instance, a button for the microphone has:
Manual, Normal, Zoom
After the Recording and Playing section, there are two pages on recording
again, one of which explains that there's another Zoom setting in the Menus.
It just says that, in order to make this setting, the switch must be set to
Manual.
Heellloooowww? What the hell is this? Why is there another Zoom setting?
Does it make the Zoom Zoomier? No explanation of the concept anywhere.
What's teh difference between Manual and Normal?
From the little experience I have in sound recording, I guessed that
Normal
and Zoom offer Automatic Volume Control, which can cause the background
noise to be amplified when the person you're recording is not speaking. With
manual, this won't occur but, if the person you're recording suddenly speaks
more softly, you might lose a few words. (OTOH, it seems you rise up the
volume without experiencing any distortion. Is there a limiter or is
distortion not possible with digital recording, I don't know. I'm used to
tape recording.)
So, what this really mean is the switch could have been like this:
Manual Auto. Vol. Control
/ \
/ \
Wide(1) Zoom(1) Wide(2) Zoom
(1) In fact chosen through a menu
(2) Called "Normal" on the switch
And it's like this all over the manual. You get from a recording section to
playing, back to recording, back to playing and every time there's an OFF
and ON option -- and that's something like 7 times! -- you're told that you
can must press this button to change from OFF to ON.
Dammit, this is just a voice recorder and, in the end, you get so dizzy that
it drives you nuts and you wonder if you got everything right.
Documentation hasn't always been so badly written. In 1966, I bought a
rangefinder camera and the little booklet that came with it was a real good
photography course, even getting into matters such as depth of field and how
to set the lens on hyperfocal for a given F-stop.
Nowadays, it is commonly accepted that anybody with a good knowledge of
english vocabulary is automatically a good writer. Geeks believe that if
what they write is very clear to them or any other geek, it must be clear to
anybody. They don't evaluate their background and that of their reader, and
on purpose, because if they did, they wouldn't know how to extract the
concepts from the tons of knowledge that they took years to acquire. They
fear that they'd have to go on explaining forever down to the most basic
stuff, which would make the exposé even more obscure.
Rhetoric is an art that isn't recognized any more. The greatest scientists
often don't possess it. For instance, Einstein wasn't able to properly
explain to the masses what the theory of relativity really meant. Lincoln
Barnett, a contemporary unknown physics teacher at Princeton, did a very
good job with The Universe and Dr Einstein. And Einstein did agree :) So
good that the little Penguin book, with all the pertaining equations at the
end, is not published any more by Penguin but has been reprinted by an
obscure publisher at a much higher price and I wouldn't swear about the
exactness of the text. (It certainly wasn't correct in the french version.)
Of course, maybe if documentation wasn't so confusing, less support would be
needed...
Ok, just my two cents on a subject that is, of course, totally unrelated to
Linux :)
=======================
I believe there should be a page on FedoraProject to explain how to get rid
of that ext3 /boot partition. Of course, for most people, I suppose it won't
be much of an issue for most users but, when a 500 MB boot partition is now
suggested for /boot -- which 25 times my first HD! --, it certainly doesn't
look very clean.
Maybe we can try to explain why so much space is needed -- only for LVM, or
for non-LVM too? -- and see what's the way of getting out of the way this
relic that will keep newcomers wondering and pondering at each upgrade for
years to come?
8:27 a.m.
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 7:56 AM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard(a)eircom.net> wrote:
Peter Larsen wrote:
> Generally, "users" shouldn't care about how/where things are stored.
> They use OpenOffice, mail, browsers and applications. It's not the users
> job to configure the box and do system administration.
I find this view bizarre.
Most Fedora users _are_ their system administrators.
You got this right on the soft spot! This is exactly my problem :) Still,
you know, there's a positive side to this. It's like when you fix your bike:
if anything goes wrong, the ass to kick is never too far.
6:37 a.m.
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Peter Larsen <
plarsen(a)famlarsen.homelinux.com> wrote:
On Mon, 2010-05-03 at 22:58 -0400, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> That's not what I said. I said I've been using Fedora and
> RedHat long
> before things like LVM existed. I'm more comfortable without
> them at
> times, especially after I got burned by a disk failure while
> using LVM.
>
> Oops! Disk failures happen. You had problems doing a restore?
>
> Whatever the case may be, it seems to me LVM shouldn't be thrown at
> newbies for the desktop. I certainly will keep away from it as much as
> I can.
I could not disagree more. LVM is essential to solve problems like
resizing issues; backup and generally solve all the problems that static
partition tables has had since their inception.
I'm glad to learn that Beartooth finally found somebody to help him out!
Generally, "users" shouldn't care about how/where
things are stored.
They use OpenOffice, mail, browsers and applications. It's not the users
job to configure the box and do system administration.
That's certainly the way Mac users think. The problem is when something goes
awry. It sometimes takes a hell of a lot of time before you get out of the
forest that eases things out.
The problem here seems to be, that Fedora isn't using a Grub
version
that supports LVM. Is there any plans on switching to grub2 on install
so we can get rid of the /boot partition and help resolve issues like
upgrade needing more space temporarily.
Oops! No help for Beartooth, then? Are you saying that LVM has been pushed
onto unsuspecting users something like 2 or 3 versions too soon? You'll need
somebody more competent than me to comment on this but that's pretty much
the reason I'm not too fond of Fedora's novelties.
6:56 a.m.
Peter Larsen wrote:
Generally, "users" shouldn't care about how/where
things are stored.
They use OpenOffice, mail, browsers and applications. It's not the users
job to configure the box and do system administration.
I find this view bizarre.
Most Fedora users _are_ their system administrators.
--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
2 p.m.
On Tue, 04 May 2010 10:58:16 -0400, Peter Larsen wrote:
On Mon, 2010-05-03 at 22:58 -0400, Marcel Rieux wrote:
[....]
> Whatever the case may be, it seems to me LVM shouldn't be
thrown at
> newbies for the desktop. I certainly will keep away from it as much as
> I can.
I could not disagree more. LVM is essential to solve problems like
resizing issues; backup and generally solve all the problems that static
partition tables has had since their inception.
[....]
<sigh> LVM is one of those things I've been hoping not to have to
learn ....
OK, I'd like to use it for exactly that. gparted says I have a /
boot partition way too small for preupgrade, and one other partition
which it labels lvm2 -- though it also warns "Logical Volume Management
not yet supported [by gparted? or ...?]"
So how do I treble or quadruple my /boot?? (Nota Bene, of the
methods at
https://fedoraproject.orgwiki/
How_to_use_PreUpgrade#Not_enough_space_in_.2Fboot neither has yet proven
within my competence -- my eyes glaze and I descend into glossolalia,
alas! -- nor have I ever managed any other way to increase the size of /
boot, such as for instance with gparted or qtparted.
--
Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck Not Quite Clueless Power User
I have precious (very precious!) little idea where up is.
9:58 a.m.
On Mon, 2010-05-03 at 22:58 -0400, Marcel Rieux wrote:
That's not what I said. I said I've been using
Fedora and
RedHat long
before things like LVM existed. I'm more comfortable without
them at
times, especially after I got burned by a disk failure while
using LVM.
Oops! Disk failures happen. You had problems doing a restore?
Whatever the case may be, it seems to me LVM shouldn't be thrown at
newbies for the desktop. I certainly will keep away from it as much as
I can.
I could not disagree more. LVM is essential to solve problems like
resizing issues; backup and generally solve all the problems that static
partition tables has had since their inception.
Generally, "users" shouldn't care about how/where things are stored.
They use OpenOffice, mail, browsers and applications. It's not the users
job to configure the box and do system administration.
The problem here seems to be, that Fedora isn't using a Grub version
that supports LVM. Is there any plans on switching to grub2 on install
so we can get rid of the /boot partition and help resolve issues like
upgrade needing more space temporarily.
--
Best Regards
Peter Larsen
Wise words of the day:
netgod: 8:42pm is not late.
doogie: its 2:42am in Joeyland
-- #Debian
9:58 p.m.
On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 11:41 PM, Kevin J. Cummings <
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net> wrote:
On 05/02/2010 11:23 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> I have selected my disk partitioning for a long time and when new
> wizardry comes along, I always wonder how much help it's going to be. In
> most cases, for a desktop, here, I'd say "none".
>
> > I believe there should be a page on FedoraProject to explain how
> to get
> > rid of that ext3 /boot partition. Of course, for most people, I
> suppose
> > it won't be much of an issue for most users but, when a 500 MB boot
> > partition is now suggested for /boot -- which 25 times my first
> HD! --,
> > it certainly doesn't look very clean.
>
> Knowledge of this sort is a dangerous weapon. It is known by those
who
> understand it and are willing to possibly shoot themselves in the
foot
> because they know what they are doing. When you get to that stage,
you
> will understand.
>
>
> There are some solutions here:
>
>
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade#Not_enough_space_in_...
>
> but you think they're unsafe?
That's not what I said. I said I've been using Fedora and RedHat long
before things like LVM existed. I'm more comfortable without them at
times, especially after I got burned by a disk failure while using LVM.
Oops! Disk failures happen. You had problems doing a restore?
Whatever the case may be, it seems to me LVM shouldn't be thrown at newbies
for the desktop. I certainly will keep away from it as much as I can.
You decide what you are willing to live with
I, as most desktop users, am willing to live with as little problems as
possible. :) I don't believe LVM is part of this.
10:16 p.m.
On 05/03/2010 10:58 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 11:41 PM, Kevin J. Cummings
<cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net <mailto:cummings@kjchome.homeip.net>> wrote:
That's not what I said. I said I've been using Fedora and RedHat long
before things like LVM existed. I'm more comfortable without them at
times, especially after I got burned by a disk failure while using LVM.
Oops! Disk failures happen. You had problems doing a restore?
I didn't have a *current* backup to restore from (what I had was 5-6
months old), but since I was replacing a disk, I took the opportunity to
punt LVM and repartition. I think I lost 1 partition with a collection
of MPEGs that wasn't backed up (even though there were bits and pieces
of it on the remaining disk in a partial LV).
Whatever the case may be, it seems to me LVM shouldn't be thrown
at
newbies for the desktop. I certainly will keep away from it as much as I
can.
I agree.
You decide what you are willing to live with
I, as most desktop users, am willing to live with as little problems as
possible. :) I don't believe LVM is part of this.
I am willing to live with more than most users, certainly more than most
newbies. Given that I've been running a version of Linux on my primary
desktop computer since version 0.12 sometime back in 1993. B^)
I still have the 5 1/2" floppy with it around here somewhere....
--
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome(a)rcn.com
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net
cummings(a)kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)
10:23 p.m.
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:01 AM, Kevin J. Cummings <
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net> wrote:
On 05/01/2010 01:08 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
You can always choose to not use LVM when you install Fedora, but you
have to be comfortable with selecting the advanced disk partitioning and
using the tools provided. Not everyone is.
I have selected my disk partitioning for a long time and when new wizardry
comes along, I always wonder how much help it's going to be. In most cases,
for a desktop, here, I'd say "none".
I believe there should be a page on FedoraProject to explain how to
get
> rid of that ext3 /boot partition. Of course, for most people, I suppose
> it won't be much of an issue for most users but, when a 500 MB boot
> partition is now suggested for /boot -- which 25 times my first HD! --,
> it certainly doesn't look very clean.
Knowledge of this sort is a dangerous weapon. It is known by those who
understand it and are willing to possibly shoot themselves in the foot
because they know what they are doing. When you get to that stage, you
will understand.
There are some solutions here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade#Not_enough_space_in_...
but you think they're unsafe?
11:24 a.m.
Am Montag, den 26.04.2010, 20:18 -0400 schrieb Ted Roche:
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:14 PM, Paolo Galtieri
<pgaltieri(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
> The question is will F13 resize /boot on an upgrade or will the 500Mb
> /boot appear only if you do a fresh install? I really don't want to
> have to re-install to get the bigger /boot.
>
Doesn't look like it made it into this version, at least not yet:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F13_bugs#Preupgrade_doesn.27t_work_...
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573451
Fix is in
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573451#c21
Regards,
Christoph
3:31 a.m.
Paolo Galtieri:
> I used it once to upgrade a system and it worked fine. However,
to make
> it work I had to remove almost everything from /boot because the default
> size of 200Mb is too small to work with preupgrade. If your /boot is
> 200Mb I would suggest upgrading via dvd rather than preupgrade.
Paul W. Frields
Right, that's been a sort of painful transition, which is one
reason
why preupgrade isn't as "official" as it should someday be.
Now Fedora by default installs a 500 MB /boot, which should be
sufficient for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, if you can't resize your existing boot, but can resize
another partition, or have some other spare partition, you could make up
a second boot partition, and use that instead.
--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I
read messages from the public lists.
7:18 p.m.
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:14 PM, Paolo Galtieri <pgaltieri(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
The question is will F13 resize /boot on an upgrade or will the 500Mb
/boot appear only if you do a fresh install? I really don't want to
have to re-install to get the bigger /boot.
Doesn't look like it made it into this version, at least not yet:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F13_bugs#Preupgrade_doesn.27t_work_...
--
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com
7:14 p.m.
On 04/26/2010 04:59 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:31:05AM -0700, Paolo Galtieri wrote:
> On 04/26/2010 10:19 AM, Beartooth wrote:
>
>> Since it's late April, with F13 due next month, I presume that
>> preupgrade must working, or about to start working, no? But I've seen
>> precious few posts here about it -- and in view of the things ordinary
>> updates seem to've been breaking lately, I'm a little spooky.
>>
>> Any word on it?
>>
>>
> I used it once to upgrade a system and it worked fine. However, to make
> it work I had to remove almost everything from /boot because the default
> size of 200Mb is too small to work with preupgrade. If your /boot is
> 200Mb I would suggest upgrading via dvd rather than preupgrade.
>
Right, that's been a sort of painful transition, which is one reason
why preupgrade isn't as "official" as it should someday be.
Now Fedora by default installs a 500 MB /boot, which should be
sufficient for the foreseeable future. (Admittedly in free software,
things change rapidly so the horizon of "foreseeable" isn't as long as
you might find in crustier realms.) ;-)
The question is will F13 resize /boot on an upgrade or will the 500Mb
/boot appear only if you do a fresh install? I really don't want to
have to re-install to get the bigger /boot.
Paolo
6:59 p.m.
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:31:05AM -0700, Paolo Galtieri wrote:
On 04/26/2010 10:19 AM, Beartooth wrote:
> Since it's late April, with F13 due next month, I presume that
> preupgrade must working, or about to start working, no? But I've seen
> precious few posts here about it -- and in view of the things ordinary
> updates seem to've been breaking lately, I'm a little spooky.
>
> Any word on it?
>
I used it once to upgrade a system and it worked fine. However, to make
it work I had to remove almost everything from /boot because the default
size of 200Mb is too small to work with preupgrade. If your /boot is
200Mb I would suggest upgrading via dvd rather than preupgrade.
Right, that's been a sort of painful transition, which is one reason
why preupgrade isn't as "official" as it should someday be.
Now Fedora by default installs a 500 MB /boot, which should be
sufficient for the foreseeable future. (Admittedly in free software,
things change rapidly so the horizon of "foreseeable" isn't as long as
you might find in crustier realms.) ;-)
--
Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/
gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com
12:31 p.m.
On 04/26/2010 10:19 AM, Beartooth wrote:
Since it's late April, with F13 due next month, I presume that
preupgrade must working, or about to start working, no? But I've seen
precious few posts here about it -- and in view of the things ordinary
updates seem to've been breaking lately, I'm a little spooky.
Any word on it?
I used it once to upgrade a system and it worked fine. However, to make
it work I had to remove almost everything from /boot because the default
size of 200Mb is too small to work with preupgrade. If your /boot is
200Mb I would suggest upgrading via dvd rather than preupgrade.
Paolo
4:31 p.m.
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 05/01/2010 02:28 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> On
> ===================
>
> Isn't it now possible to revert to not using a /boot partition and
> having the full / space for installation?
No. Because while the latest GRUB in Fedora supports Ext4, it does not
support booting from LVM.
My /boot partition is 290 MB. Since the default is now 500MB is it necessary
that I resize? Will /swap be used if necessary? I have 2 GB of swap that
have, I believe, never been used since I have 4 GB RAM. Maybe another
formatting would have been preferable...
3:58 p.m.
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 7:59 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster(a)gmail.com>wrote:
Now Fedora by default installs a 500 MB /boot, which should be
sufficient for the foreseeable future. (Admittedly in free software,
things change rapidly so the horizon of "foreseeable" isn't as long as
you might find in crustier realms.) ;-)
I believe a /boot partition became necessary in F11 because (I adopted
Fedora with the 11 version):
Since Fedora uses LVM by default and GRUB doesn't support that either, in
practice you will need to keep using the Ext3 filesystem for the /boot
partition. This is the recommended setup and is how Anaconda sets it up by
default. To prevent boot issues, Anaconda will not let you format a /boot
partition with Ext4.
(...)
Note that Rawhide (and hence Fedora 12) will support Ext4 on the boot
partition.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ext4_in_Fedora_11#Does_GRUB_support_Ext4.3F
===================
Isn't it now possible to revert to not using a /boot partition and having
the full / space for installation?
10:41 p.m.
On 05/02/2010 11:23 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
I have selected my disk partitioning for a long time and when new
wizardry comes along, I always wonder how much help it's going to be. In
most cases, for a desktop, here, I'd say "none".
> I believe there should be a page on FedoraProject to explain how
to get
> rid of that ext3 /boot partition. Of course, for most people, I
suppose
> it won't be much of an issue for most users but, when a 500 MB boot
> partition is now suggested for /boot -- which 25 times my first
HD! --,
> it certainly doesn't look very clean.
Knowledge of this sort is a dangerous weapon. It is known by those who
understand it and are willing to possibly shoot themselves in the foot
because they know what they are doing. When you get to that stage, you
will understand.
There are some solutions here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade#Not_enough_space_in_...
but you think they're unsafe?
That's not what I said. I said I've been using Fedora and RedHat long
before things like LVM existed. I'm more comfortable without them at
times, especially after I got burned by a disk failure while using LVM.
I do things that some people would consider "unsafe" or not natural, or
not the latest and greatest because I've been doing it that way for years.
I've read the section on not enough space in /boot. I've used the
download method for the image files on occasion on my test machine.
The last time I did it, the file I needed to download did not exist on
the Fedora server for a couple of days (the couple of days I was trying
to do the upgrade). I had to google around to find another copy of it
still on a server somewhere. Then I had the unfortunate power-failure
during package installation that effectively hosed my system and had to
re-install from scratch.
I don't believe the published methods are inherently unsafe, everything
is unsafe without sufficient safeguards. I don't always have those
safeguards in place. A lot of people don't.
(I read something somewhere, once, that said that multi PV usage of LVM
was only safe when implemented over a Raid array of disks (redundancy
required), so that it could survive a single disk failure. B^)
You decide what you are willing to live with, and you take your chances
with the rest.
--
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome(a)rcn.com
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net
cummings(a)kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)
2:01 a.m.
On 05/01/2010 01:08 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Kevin J. Cummings
<cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net <mailto:cummings@kjchome.homeip.net>> wrote:
Necessary? no. But you may have problems upgrading if you
don't have
enough storage in /boot for whichever upgrade method you choose to use
during the upgrade.
I'm afraid there's a lot of stupid questions you'll have to forgive
here, but I'm completely lost.
As I said, I have 290 MB for /boot but, with the 3 past kernels
installed, I hardly use more that ¼ of it. When a new version of Fedora
is installed, it installs a new kernel and deletes, as usual, the oldest
one. Why is much space needed?
Because preupgrade downloads a bunch of stuff that it uses to bootstrap
the upgraded kernel with, and it puts some of that in /boot/upgrade.
That includes a kernel, a ramdisk image, and a couple of other small
files. During the first step when it downloads everything, it has not
yet deleted your old kernel(s), so all of this stuff must co-exist in
your /boot. Sometimes if you run out of space in /boot, preupgrade is
smart enough to download some of these files for you, but you would need
a working network interface during the bootstrap, which may or may not
be problematic. Suffice to say, that you may or may not have enough
space in boot. You won't know until you try.
Me? I recently deleted my LVMs and re-partitioned my F13 system with a
single / partitition (ext4) and a swap partition (instead of having a
/boot partition, now /boot is just a subdirectory of /.
It seems to me this makes sense, except I'd also have a /home partition.
It should never be a problem having a separate /home partition. My home
server as separate partitions for: /, /usr, /home, /local, /var, and
whatever else I decide I want disk space for (which for me is /src,
/mythtv, and /iso). YMMV
Say you have a 20GB partition for / on a desktop. Is there really
much
chance that it will one day get filled and that there will be no cruft
to remove? I mean on a desktop...!
ISTR that the separate /boot partition had its roots way back when grub
needed to be able to find its kernel and ramdisk files within the first
1024 cylinders of your boot disk (stupid BIOS limitation). This is why
/boot came into existance. It remains in existance due to grub still
not being able to read those files out of LVMs and because of a lack of
ext4 support (which is only just now getting into grub in F13?). So, if
you eliminate LVMs, you've gone most of the way towards eliminating the
need for a /boot partition.
When you can get a 1TB HD for less than $100, is there any sense in
trying to cut the 20GB to 10 GB and having to use LVM?
Wikipedia says:
On small systems (like a desktop at home), instead of having to guess
how big a partition needs to be, LVM allows you to resize your disk
partitions easily as needed.
I had an LVM system one day, spread across 2 PVs. Once of those disks
died, and I lost my entire system. B^( When I bought my replacement
drive, I eliminated the LVMs for straight partitions. I was able to
recover *most* of my system from some old backups (wouldn't ya know I
had stopped doing backups regularly some time before I tried that
upgrade....)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_%28Linux%29
Is LVM the default when you make a Fedora desktop installation? I hope
not. If it is, I believe I disabled it since, when I go into Logical
Volume Management, all partitions show: Uninitiated disk entity. Does
LVM change the way fstab looks?
You can always choose to not use LVM when you install Fedora, but you
have to be comfortable with selecting the advanced disk partitioning and
using the tools provided. Not everyone is.
Swap? Non-sequitor. /boot is file-system (disk) space.
This goes with what I asked here:
"When a new version of Fedora is installed, it installs a new kernel and
deletes, as usual, the oldest one. Why is much space needed? "
The deletion of old kernels doesn't actually happen until *after* the
new system is installed (just in case it fails, you can still re-boot
the old system). Once the upgrade actually starts to install the
upgraded packages is when things pass a point of no return. After that
if any drastic happens it becomes a case of recovering the new system.
I've had that happen many times. Most recently due to a power outage
during installation on a machine without a UPS. (ouch!) The machine
could no longer boot either the new nor the old system and had to be
re-installed. Even though my data was still there, some was borked
during the boot-up, and resulted in a kernel panic. Not nice.
I thought maybe, when a new version of Fedora is installed, that
some
compiling operation are needed that occupy a lot of space in the /boot
partition, and that /swap could be temporarily be used. I'm afraid this
does not make much sense. The problem is I can't figure out what does.
Not compiling, but downloads. It needs the filesystem space to store
files in.
> Now, if you want to trade off some of your swap partition to add
to your
/boot partition, that *may* be do-able if the are adjacent on the disk,
They are not. Countrary to what is most commonly suggested, long ago, I
took the habit to put swap at the end of the disk so that each
revolution of the HD read/writes more sectors, making swap more
efficient. /boot is at the beginning of the disk.
Oh, well. LVM can get around that as it doesn't care where in the PV
the actual data is.
But, since I believe I don't use LVM, is there any way I can get
rid of
the ext3 boot partition and use a /boot directory in / without doing a
back-up/restore?
Sure, from your already booted system, unmount /boot. Now mount it
somewhere else (like /mnt/boot). Now you can copy the data from
/mnt/boot to /boot in your / partition. Now you no longer need the
/boot partition (assuming grub can read what it needs out of your /
partition). You may need to edit your /boot/grub/grub.conf file to add
/boot to some of the paths that exist there (I did) and possibly update
the "active" partition from your old /boot partition to your new /
partition. You may need to re-install grub if your old /boot and your
new / are on different disks.
The whole section between equal signs will be qualified by most here
as
an unnecessary rant. Don't feel obliged to read it.
=================
[rant removed]
=======================
I believe there should be a page on FedoraProject to explain how to get
rid of that ext3 /boot partition. Of course, for most people, I suppose
it won't be much of an issue for most users but, when a 500 MB boot
partition is now suggested for /boot -- which 25 times my first HD! --,
it certainly doesn't look very clean.
Knowledge of this sort is a dangerous weapon. It is known by those who
understand it and are willing to possibly shoot themselves in the foot
because they know what they are doing. When you get to that stage, you
will understand.
Maybe we can try to explain why so much space is needed -- only for
LVM,
or for non-LVM too? -- and see what's the way of getting out of the way
this relic that will keep newcomers wondering and pondering at each
upgrade for years to come?
As things are fixed, things change. As new functionality is added,
things changed. Not always for the better.
I hope this has been helpful.
--
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome(a)rcn.com
cummings(a)kjchome.homeip.net
cummings(a)kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)
5104
days inactive
5113
days old
22 comments
12 participants
participants (12)
-
Beartooth -
Christoph Wickert -
Kevin Cummings -
Marcel Rieux -
Paolo Galtieri -
Paul W. Frields -
Peter Larsen -
Rahul Sundaram -
Roger -
Ted Roche -
Tim -
Timothy Murphy