GPT in Fedora 16

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 16:17 -0600, Andrew McNabb wrote:
> While installing Fedora 16 Alpha, I ran into some problems that turned
> out to be caused by the installer formatting with a GPT rather than an
> MBR partition table.
> 
> I would like to understand the change and its implications, and I have
> unsuccessfully tried to track down more information.  I haven't been
> able to find anything in the Fedora 16 Alpha Release Notes or the Grub2
> feature page.  The only definitive reference I've been able to find is
> the comment "x86 uses GPT disklabels by default on all machines, even
> non-EFI" on the Anaconda/Changes wiki page.
> 
> There seem to be some complications associated with the change.  For
> example, Windows can only support GPT on UEFI machines, so dual-booting
> appears to be unsupported (I could not find an option for MBR partition
> tables in the installer).
> 
> Where should I look for more information?  Thanks.

To boot to a GPT disk from BIOS (rather than EFI) you need a BIOS boot
partition. If you use one of the automatic partitioning methods, rather
than manual partitioning, F16's installer will create one for you. If
you choose manual partitioning on a BIOS system and don't create a BIOS
boot partition, anaconda will pop up a (somewhat cryptic) warning.

If you're installing alongside an existing copy of Windows I believe
anaconda ought to leave the disk label alone (MSDOS) anyway, though I'm
not sure we've tested that. It should only write a new one if you're
blowing away any existing partitions on the disk, I think. (IMBW on this
one).
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net