/ must be on a partition or LV that will be formatted. Reusing an existing / is not allowed.

[Felix Miata]

On 2011/10/17 20:46 (GMT-0700) Adam Williamson composed:

> On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 21:09 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:

>>  I always partition and format prior to beginning any Linux distro
>>  installation. "Formatting" for this purpose includes formatting as many as
>>  multiples of months or years prior, and simply deleting system directory
>>  trees, like bin, sys, usr, etc, and preserving the partition's filesystem
>>  type, compatible inode size, UUID, fsck age and device label for
>>  compatibility with the other installed systems on the machine. It also
>>  includes leaving selected config and data files behind so that they are
>>  maximally handy for customizing the initial installation on first boot. If
>>  the quote above means I can't do this any more, it means I'm done with any
>>  not already installed Fedora releases. :-(

> Yes, that is what it means. We can't sensibly expect to be able to
> reliably install to a root partition with data on it.

This is the only place I can remember encountering such an installation 
restriction. My 40 or so machines average in excess of 6 OSes per. There's 
just no room for a forced procedural deviation of this magnitude in my 
environment. Even Windows allows to install to an existing partition without 
formatting it. It just overwrites whatever it pleases, which I can, have 
been, and do accept. Other distros apparently have no problem doing the same, 
and without disposing of entire directory trees as Anaconda has. Its name is apt.

> I'm sorry if this is inconvenient, but it does seem a bit over the top
> to issue an ultimatum like that. You can't always expect every cool

I simply stated some facts. I've been doing what I've been doing many years. 
It works to save me time, easing the post-installation pain, so there's no 
other compelling reason for me to change. It'll free up time to spend on 
friendlier and more flexible installers that don't require 150% of average 
minimum RAM just to initialize, and to spend the time necessary to relearn 
everything I knew about sysvinit that systemd scattered to the four winds.

> little hack you come up with to keep working forever, it's just not the
> nature of the beast. There are many other ways to do this kind of
> provisioning, often more robust and well engineered; why not use one of
> those?

For instance?

> I'm trying to think of the name of that Fedora-y one with some
> sort of 'orange' theme...

I've always found Anaconda to be the among the least friendly, and virtually 
the least flexible Linux installer of all I've used, so now I can just forget 
about it altogether, absent actual rationale why this unconditional 
limitation is justified that might change my mind. If that was posted here, I 
missed it. I only just spotted it today from this thread's subject.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/