Proposing new dual booting release criteria

[Gene Czarcinski]

On 09/29/2014 03:32 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-09-08 at 11:09 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> re: dual boot criteria for existing Linux + new Fedora install
>>
>> On Sep 7, 2014, at 6:52 AM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro at gnome.org> wrote:
>>
>>> "The installer must be able to install into free space alongside
>>> existing GNU/Linux installations that are intended to be detected by the
>>> upstream software for detecting previously-installed operating systems,
>>> and install a bootloader which can boot into each previous
>>> installation."
>> - Blocking on dual boot install failures, yes. Triple+ boot support is not realistic, although it benefits the more we do the right things with dual boot.
>>
>> {
>>
>> The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an existing GNU/Linux installation, install and configure a bootloader that will boot both systems, within the limitations of the upstream bootloader."
>> Within the limitations? [show] Purpose of this clause is to not require us to fix upstream bootloader bugs or design limitations.
>>
>> }
> Hi folks! So if I may, can we try and reset this thread to the criteria
> discussion? it'd be good to have any new criteria in place before we hit
> Beta TC1.
>
> So I believe we have under discussion the following criteria:
>
> 1. "The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an
> existing clean Windows installation and install a bootloader which can
> boot into both Windows and Fedora."
>
> This one is simply dropping the UEFI get-out clause from the current
> Final criterion. I am a big solid +1 to this. If no-one has any
> objections let's get this one implemented this week.
+1
>
> 2. "The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an
> existing OS X installation, install and configure a bootloader that will
> boot Fedora; if the boot menu presents OS X entries, they should boot OS
> X."
>
> (so far as I could see on a quick skim back through the thread, this was
> the most recent version of the OS X proposal). I am +1 to this too, it
> seems reasonable. We could perhaps insert that the Fedora install
> process should not render the OS X install unbootable from the EFI boot
> manager?
Now I am all +1 for being able to multi-boot Fedora an OS X on the same 
hardware but I though the Chris Murphy (who is somewhat of an Apple User 
expert) said (somewhere/sometime) and anaconda/Fedora was getting it all 
wrong and not reliable at all *and* that a better way was ("it hurts so 
don't do that") to not use the Fedora's bootload but instead use the 
firware bootloader to boot OS X.  Just saying.  Now if grub2 can be 
fixed so that it will reliably boot OS X, then +1.
>
> 3. The installer must be able to install into free space alongside an
> existing GNU/Linux installation, install and configure a bootloader that
> will boot both systems, within the limitations of the upstream
> bootloader."
> Within the limitations? [show] Purpose of this clause is to not require
> us to fix upstream bootloader bugs or design limitations.
>
> This is the complex one we're still struggling with. I think the above
> is possibly a little broad and could do with either limiting to
> stock-ish installs of 'commonly-used' or 'popular' distributions, or
> some more vaguely-worded wiggle room clause. I don't want to have to
> come up with some kind of criterion judo to justify us not slipping
> Final release three weeks to fix, I don't know, dual-boot with an xfs
> install of Fermi or something (no disrespect intended, Fermi users...)
While supporting other distributions would be nice, I would consider 
that (as a minimum) I should be able to install Fedora along side other 
installations of Fedora.

Q: What about installations for Fedora which use previously (Fedora or 
at least Linux) allocated partitions/LVMlv/btrfs-subvolumes?

Q: As currently envisioned, what magic is going to be used to boot these 
other systems?  Currently, grub2's /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober is broken at 
least as far as booting other Fedora 21 installations:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1108296

Keep up the good work Adam +1.

Gene