Doesn't Look Like F18's Anaconda Will Allow Manual Partition of Multiple Drives

[joncr]

I've installed 3 recent F18 nightlies. The new simplified Anaconda is very much in evidence.

It appears the installer's new design has simplified manual control of partitions on multiple disks out of existence. In this Bugzilla thread we see it said that:

"We have no intention of allowing users to specify start/end sectors for new partitions.

We similarly have no intention of allowing users to specify the partition number for new partitions." (from David Lehman).

I installed F18 on a machine with 3 physical disks. I needed to create partitions with specific sizes and mount points on those disks. The new Anaconda partitioner did not enable anything near that level of control.

With a week or so before beta, I don't see this changing, sadly. I support reducing the chances for error in a mistake-prone process like partitioning. But, if the simplification intended to accomplish that also takes away the ability to create a specific partition structure, then the new Anaconda is being dumb downed without reason. Anaconda has contained a perfectly useful way to specify partitions for umpteen years. What's wrong with including that routine in the new installer, behind a button that says "Experts Only"?

It looks like I'll need to set up my partitions before installing F18, and hope the installer recognizes what I've done and adheres to it.

This business of eliminating functionality in the interest of simplification sounds, dare I say it, rather Gnome-ish.

[AdamW]

This is incorrect. You will be able to specify the target disk for a partition in custom partitioning from anaconda 18.22 onwards. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=870569

[joncr]

I stand corrected, then, happily. Thanks.

Originally Posted by AdamW

This is incorrect. You will be able to specify the target disk for a partition in custom partitioning from anaconda 18.22 onwards. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=870569

I tried Fedora-18b-smoke12-x86_64-netinst.iso and the partitioning works great.
Now all I need to do is find how to specify where the boot loader is installed.

[AdamW]

yellowman: there's a link on the disk picker marked 'full disk summary and options...'; if you click on that you can choose the bootloader target disk. I didn't find that particularly discoverable, but I don't want to whack the design too hard because it's just really damn difficult to come up with a design for handling disks and partitioning that works from all angles...

[joncr]

Originally Posted by AdamW

This is incorrect. You will be able to specify the target disk for a partition in custom partitioning from anaconda 18.22 onwards. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=870569

Just installed via the 1 Nov Fedora-18b-smoke13-x86_64-netinst.iso, which identified itself as Anaconda 18.22. I could not find a way to create and map partitions to specific drives. For example, a way to put "/" on /dev/sda, /home and /usr/local on /dev/sdb, swap on /dev/sdc, etc.

At the start of the partitioning phase, the user can select, by highlighting, individual drives. I highlighted all three of my drives. Should I have selected one drive at a time, partitioning that, and then backing up to deal with the other drives? Once I was in the actual partitioning action, the individual drives were not identified in any fashion.

The 3 drives in use are a 240gb SSD, a 3tb drive, and a 1tb drive. In the end, I used Automatic Partitioning. In Gnome, Disks shows the SSD with a 524mb /boot, an 8.4gb swap (the machine has 16gb ram), a 54gb "/", with the remainder unclaimed. All of the 3tb drive is allocated to /home. The 1tb drive was not allocated. That's OK for a test installation for a few weeks, but not at all useful for a "real" setup.

[AdamW]

joncr: after you pick the disks you want to use and hit Continue, a dialog pops up. It looks different depending on whether you need to free up space for the install or not, but in either case, there will be a checkbox with some text that talks about 'customizing' the partitions. You need to check that and hit OK to get into custom partitioning, where you can, well...custom partition.

[AdamW]

however, it's possible the patch isn't actually in 18.22, the bug is still marked ASSIGNED - I thought dlehman had the patch ready to go and it would go in as soon as we signed off on the freeze break, but apparently not. I expect it will still get in before Beta goes out, though. I'll check on the current state.

edit: just checked with dlehman, he says he has the patch ready and will mail it out for review in a couple of hours. So it isn't in 18.22 but has a chance of making 18.23 which should be built later tonight.

[joncr]

Originally Posted by AdamW

however, it's possible the patch isn't actually in 18.22, the bug is still marked ASSIGNED - I thought dlehman had the patch ready to go and it would go in as soon as we signed off on the freeze break, but apparently not. I expect it will still get in before Beta goes out, though. I'll check on the current state.

edit: just checked with dlehman, he says he has the patch ready and will mail it out for review in a couple of hours. So it isn't in 18.22 but has a chance of making 18.23 which should be built later tonight.

Thanks for taking the time to respond and double check this. F18 is looking to be very nice. I like the aesthetics and the approach of Anaconda.

[AdamW]

18.23 is now built, and it does have this feature. There's a 'gears' button next to the + and - buttons to create new partitions in the custom part interface. If you select a partition and click the 'gears' icon, a dialog will pop up that lets you select which disk(s) you're happy for the partition to go onto. I'm not sure why this isn't just in the 'customize' stuff to the right, but hey, I'm not a UI designer...