On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 8:06 AM, Michael Eager <eager(a)eagercon.com> wrote:
The Fedora 23 installation on my laptop will not boot. grub.cfg
is missing, for some reason.
That's unusual. How do you know it's missing, and where is it normally located?
I don't have a backup and trying to
rebuild grub.cfg seemed a bit problematic. (I'm able to awkwardly
boot into a Ubuntu install on the laptop and I have a bit of concern
that running grub-install will end up breaking that.)
Create a USB stick using any Fedora netinstaller, boot and choose the
Troubleshooting menu, and in that submenu is an option to Rescue a
Fedora system. Choose that. There will be an option to locate and
assemble Fedora, do that. And then at the shell:
# chroot
what's next depends on whether you have UEFI or BIOS firmware:
Reinstalling GRUB itself
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/25/html/System_Administrators...
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/25/html/System_Administrators...
Rebuilding grub.cfg is in step 4 here, pick one of the two commands
listed, depending on firmware type.
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/25/html/System_Administrators...
You can do this with any Fedora netinstaller. The version doesn't matter.
I wanted to repair/upgrade the F23 install with F25. Booting the
Live DVD, there isn't an option to repair/upgrade an existing
install, and when I try to do a new install, the installer will
not let me install over the existing F23 root. (When I select the
old root partition as /, it will not add it to the new install
partitions.)
The install requires the partition used for root fs to be reformatted.
Basically they want a completely clean file system before starting an
installation. The partial exception is Btrfs, which doesn't need
reformatting, but will require a new subvolume created for the new
root fs. The installer will do that automatically.
The Fedora documentation that I find says that the Live CD/DVD does
not support doing an upgrade, I need to use a bootable DVD.
I don't think any media supports upgrades anymore. Which documentation
says this?
The
documentation says that an existing install will be automatically
recognized when it is booted. I'm not able to find a complete
bootable image for Fedora 25 Workstation. When I found the spins
of Fedora 25, each seems to be a Live image, not bootable.
I don't understand what the distinction is.
Q: Is a complete bootable Fedora 25 Workstation image available?
There's a net install image, and there's a Live image. That's it.
Q: Is the Fedora 25 Server image a complete bootable DVD including
KDE?
No, it's neither KDE nor GNOME. It's a specific Fedora Server product,
and uses Cockpit accessed via web browser, for its GUI.
Q: Is there a way to tell the Live installer to upgrade/replace
an existing installation?
Replace, yes. You'll need to specify which partitions to reformat or
delete. Probably a good bet you don't want to delete or reformat /home
Q: Is there another path to upgrading a damaged installation?
No, you have to fix it before it can be upgraded.
--
Chris Murphy