upgrading to F16 or F17 with /var and/or /usr on LVM volumes?

[Mateusz Marzantowicz]

On 22.06.2012 19:29, Joel Rees wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 1:23 AM, Mateusz Marzantowicz
> <mmarzantowicz at osdf.com.pl> wrote:
>> On 20.06.2012 16:13, Joel Rees wrote:
>>> Tried preupgrade, but it can't find my old system, and kicks the
>>> upgrade process to the curb.
>>>
>>> Then I tried the netinstall CD and it can't find my old system, either.
>>>
>>> Looking around, I see a bit of discussion of problems with the install
>>> process recognizing  LVM partitions. Rescue mode boot of the
>>> netinstall CD appears to be unable to mount LVM partitions.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know of a work-around short of backing up /etc and /home
>>> and doing a fresh install?
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Joel Rees
>> Fedora LiveCD should recognize partitions on LVM and RAID even with
>> encryption.
> And what good does that do me? Or is there a LiveCD that does upgrades?

I'm not sure because I've installed my Fedora form netinstall cd but as
I remember there is an option to fresh install form Live CD (maybe an
upgrade is also available.) But my original answer was to your need of
doing backup, so Live CD seemed to be perfect for this job.

>
> Well, the netinstall CD does have lvm command line tools on it.
>
> Right now I'm reading the device mapper commands. If I find the right
> commands to activate the logical partitions, I still need to know the
> name of the install command so I can re-start the install/upgrade
> process after dropping out to a shell. The command does not seem to be
> called "install", at any rate.
>
> (Can't remember whether I've done this on Fedora. Last time I did this
> kind of thing on openBSD, it was just "install" there, as I recall.)

I'm really surprised that anaconda doesn't recognized your LVM
partitions. I had a problem with broken installation so I restarted it
(reboot) and I was able to partition my disk again (including LVM
changes etc.)

To see the command, start the installer (anaconda) by booting your
computer and then drop to shell and type in ps command. That should give
you the command to start anaconda again. You might also try to do what's
needed in parallel with the installer on that additional terminals.

>> It's not recommended to have /usr on different partition so perhaps
>> you'd like to change your partition layout.
> Yeah, I know all about that trash.
>
>> More about /usr:
>> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
> I'm familiar with the issues. And the arguments. You don't fix broken
> semantics by breaking everything. The split is useful and is used.
>
> And having no split at all between required system binaries and
> optional system binaries is just tempting fate. It's the kind of
> technical activity that Microsoft "engineers" call engineering. The
> best one might hope it could be is an excuse for getting a paycheck
> when you can't think of anything really useful to do.
>
> And it's a shame, because there is breakage there that could actually
> be fixed if there weren't a fixation on merging.
>
>> Mateusz Marzantowicz
> I'm not attacking you, by the way, I'm just using your reply as a
> vehicle to vent my disgust with what Poettering is doing.
>
>
No offense taken.