Installer inadequacies

[David A. De Graaf]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 05:13:44PM -0500, David A. De Graaf wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 01:26:36PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> > David A. De Graaf wrote:
> > >Fedora 18.
> > >
> > >What a disaster!  What were they thinking when they threw away a
> > >perfectly good installer and inflicted this new User Interface on us?

Here's some good news for a change.
I solved the problem of automatically mounting the missing encrypted
partition containing the old F17 root filesystem.  It's pretty easy
- once you know how.

The file /etc/crypttab contains the list of partitions to be decrypted
at boot time and I simply added a fourth line:
  
  # cat /etc/crypttab
  luks-0fc2a8e0-9d71-4af7-853e-afb3c89794e2
     UUID=0fc2a8e0-9d71-4af7-853e-afb3c89794e2 none 
  luks-dc53437b-7efa-426c-870c-972d96f5f0ca
     UUID=dc53437b-7efa-426c-870c-972d96f5f0ca none 
  luks-9800d5dd-f281-4750-b0cf-42282401ace0
     UUID=9800d5dd-f281-4750-b0cf-42282401ace0 none 
  f17enc UUID=89cafeb4-cc25-4e2d-94c9-181c04155e73 none

The first field is the name to be given the decrypted filesystem in
/dev/mapper.  The second field is the UUID of the partition, which can
be discovered from the blkid command.

I see no point in using the cryptic luks-blah-blah names, which seem
gratuitously hard to read, type and understand.  Instead I simply
named the new decrypted file f17enc.

After rebooting I see all four decrypted filesystems: 

  # ll /dev/mapper
  total 0
  crw------- 1 root root 10, 236 Jan 19 12:45 control
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       7 Jan 19 12:45 f17enc -> ../dm-2
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       7 Jan 19 12:45
      luks-0fc2a8e0-9d71-4af7-853e-afb3c89794e2 -> ../dm-1
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       7 Jan 19 12:45
      luks-9800d5dd-f281-4750-b0cf-42282401ace0 -> ../dm-3
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       7 Jan 19 12:45
      luks-dc53437b-7efa-426c-870c-972d96f5f0ca -> ../dm-0

and all that remains is to add a line to /etc/fstab:

  /dev/mapper/f17enc  /f17                   ext4    defaults   1 2


Now the old root is automatically mounted so that I can copy the myriad
of configuration changes that make a Fedora system usable.

The other good news, that almost compensates for the horrible installer,
is that systemd has been partly fixed, so you no longer have to append
".service"  to every command.  What genius thought that up?

I'm sure Harald Reindl will point out that I am merely expressing joy that
a regression that was imposed two editions ago has finally been fixed.
Sigh...


-- 
        David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
        dad at datix.us         www.datix.us


If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
	-- Abraham Lincoln