F17 bogus "could not detect partitions" error

[Chris Murphy]

On Mar 20, 2012, at 12:52 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:

> Proposed as blocker, F17 Final.
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=805272

Just mentioned in the bug report, but failed to mention here upon discovery.

The Windows Vista installer, presumably also Windows 7, but no idea about XP, will fail to install to a GPT disk when booted on BIOS hardware. The installer app itself does not provide a direct work around, but a Microsoft technote's prescribed procedure says to use the install disk's 'diskpart' command line utility to run the 'clean' command on the target disk. This wipes the MBR and GPT regions. Windows will then create an MBR disk and install. Lacking traces of GPT, parted, anaconda, and Fedora thus install without this problem.

However, there are many more tools and methods to arrive at a valid legacy MBR that do not blank either stale GPT, and result in parted failing to honor the MBR, even optionally. And thus anaconda fails to install Fedora because it "could not detect partitions".


Chris Murphy