Installation plays hardball

[Joel Rees]

> 	Yes, and I did, mostly with custom, over and over again. Id est, I  
> tried to increase the size of /boot any way I could, and never  
> found any way to add a single byte.

Are you talking about increasing the size of /boot before or after  
the install? (I can't tell.)

Incidentally, my memory is that /boot will not be managed by LVM  
under any ordinary (much less default) setup.

That means it will have to be either a "base" MSDOS partition or  
MSDOS "extended" partition. That puts it out of LVM's ken.  
Completely. LVM is entirely irrelevant to your issues, or it should be.

Based on what you've said elsewhere, I suspect where you are getting  
stuck is in disk druid, the GUI tool that the install process uses to  
allow you to set up a partition map with both LVM and non-LVM  
partitions and not worry about what to do with which, meaning that it  
calls into the gparted and LVM tools for you.

You aren't, by any chance, trying to change the size of /boot on a  
PPC Mac, are you?

> 	I'm not knowledgeable enough to do sophisticated partitioning --  
> that would be like a half-blind spastic (both of which I resemble  
> at times) trying to shave with a straight razor. He might succeed,  
> of course.

Partitioning really isn't rocket science. I suppose that it may sound  
like I'm insulting you to say that, but I'm not. Trust me.

The scariest part of partitioning is trying to guess how much you  
need where, and that was one of the original reasons for the  
existence of the LVM project. The other scariest part is that the old  
tools allowed you to declare the partitions to begin and end at  
certain places when setting up the labels, and then allowed you to  
tell the system they started and ended at other places, which is  
definitely, well, not rocket science, but a bit scary.

If your eyes just glazed over, don't worry. It would be pretty hard  
to get any of the GUI tools to allow you to do that. You'd have to  
try really, really hard. So you really don't need to know about that.

>> Alternatively, you may create LVM volumes
>> and partitions inside them. It's all there in the GUI, and it's  
>> completely
>> configurable. Nothing is forced down on you, AFAIK.
>
> 	I haven't the faintest conception what LVM is, much less what good  
> it is to the Alpha Plus Technoids who understand it, but whose  
> prowess I no more aspire to than they to expertise on the history  
> of tongues. I did try, several times each, not only with Anaconda  
> but by accepting the risk of using gparted and qtparted. All  
> refused, every time, to let me add a single byte to /boot.

Did you try deleting the partition after /boot first? That's the  
usual step. It may not be necessary when performing a fresh install,  
but once the partitions have been cut (labeled, really), you need  
special tools to move partitions, and if you resize one partition,  
the partitions after that one must be moved.

(Unless you're using LVM.)

That means that, if you have any important data (configuration files,  
etc.) in the partition after /boot, you need to back that up first.

Okay, that's the other scariest part. If you have data in a partition  
that you can't afford to lose, you really, really should back it up  
first.

Okay, okay, physically moving partitions is scary. Theoretically,  
it's just moving bits around, but calculating from where to where,  
well, yes, that can get close to rocket science in terms of being  
"hard".

And, no, we do not have an equivalent to "Partition Magik" or  
whatever that was. (Been seriously bit by PM. I mean, to  
the point of copying an important project out of a botched MSWindows  
system on floppies. And even with access to Microsoft's  
documentation, Norton has a little trouble with that stuff.) There  
are gnu tools for moving the data when resizing partitions, but those  
are also easy to  
screw  
 
up  
with. 

>> The only thing I miss is the ability to use old-school fdisk  
>> instead of disk
>> druid, but over time I learned to trust it to do its job as well  
>> as fdisk. :-)
>
> 	Fdisk is another of the things of which I know only how to spell  
> them; life is too short ....

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself. (Just kidding.)

Hopefully, what I've written above will provide enough clues that you  
can figure out how to tell us what you're really trying to do, and  
then it will be easier to give you advice, suggest alternatives, etc.