About anaconda

[glennzo]

When installing Fedora I've noticed that I can't use non-empty partitions. Anaconda doesn't list them. It seems that as far as anaconda is concerned these partitions don't even exist.

Today I was planning on installing to /dev/sda5. That partition already had Fedora installed on it. It wasn't shown as an option. I formatted the partition and reran anaconda. Now that partition is available as an install target. Is this normal behavior for anaconda?

[lsatenstein]

Glenn, I think you are doing something wrong. What you are trying to do I do regularly. After you choose your disk(s), choose I will do my own partitioning. Anaconda will show you every partition on the target disks. You consider reformat, overwrite or even split/merge adjacent ones.

As I have become a frequent reinstaller of Linux I find Anaconda to be a great tool. When I choose to install across two disks, it even gives me the choice of boot drive.

Try Anaconda again, to stop before the commit. I used that feature to gain intamacy with Anaconda's working​s.

[glennzo]

Hi Leslie. Thank you for you interest.

Glenn, I think you are doing something wrong.

I thought I might be missing something.

What you are trying to do I do regularly.

As do I. I've done hundreds of installs using anaconda.

After you choose your disk(s), choose I will do my own partitioning.

I usually do.

Anaconda will show you every partition on the target disks.

It doesn't. This is the issue.

Thanks again for your attention.

[antikythera]

Are the 'hidden' partitions contained in an LVM or standard partition layout? encrypted or otherwise? just wondering if that makes any difference.

Also, I tend to format cleared and/or alter partitions using GParted before letting anaconda loose as I don't trust it with partitioning tasks. I then just use anaconda custom partition option to set mount points and format only the compulsory format moint point volumes.

[glennzo]

Are the 'hidden' partitions contained in an LVM or standard partition layout? encrypted or otherwise? just wondering if that makes any difference.

Also, I tend to format cleared and/or alter partitions using GParted before letting anaconda loose as I don't trust it with partitioning tasks. I then just use anaconda custom partition option to set mount points and format only the compulsory format moint point volumes.

Standard partition layout. The laptop has Win10 installed and that uses partitions 1,2 and 3. Partition 4 is extended. That contains partitions 5-13. 5 was the target.

Installation of Fedora 26 was successful only after formatting partition 5.

[smr54]

Since F25, I have found that Ananconda wouldn't recognize Linux partitions on a machine that had had UFS partitions such as Free or OpenBSD installed.
The workaround, if you don't need anything on the partition, is to boot from a FreeBSD USB, and run newfs on the partition. Then anaconda will see it.

As this seemed to be an edge case, and the developers couldn't reproduce it, on the bug I filed, I said nevermind. Did you ever install FreeBSD on this machine?

At any rate, once running newfs on the partition, if you click the arrow by Unknown, or whatever it says, it should show the partition.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1372919

In my case, even formatting the partition as an empty ext4 one didn't work--I could only get Anaconda to see it if I ran newfs, the FreeBSD command. Have you ever, out of curiosity, had a BSD installed on this machine?

[lsatenstein]

Hi Leslie. Thank you for you interest.

I thought I might be missing something. As do I. I've done hundreds of installs using anaconda.I usually do.It doesn't. This is the issue.

Thanks again for your attention.

Hi Glenn

I am using either ext4 or xfs for my partitions. I statically assigned each one. When I reinstall, I preserve /home and reformat the others.

On my 6 drives, there are no hidden partitions. Everything is visable. I have F25 and F26 installed on the drives. Sorry to write to low a level to you, it was not intended as a bad gesture. I am a nerd. One question. Is any drive an SSD? Could that space be a SSD reserved area?

---------- Post added at 02:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:51 PM ----------

Since F25, I have found that Ananconda wouldn't recognize Linux partitions on a machine that had had UFS partitions such as Free or OpenBSD installed.
The workaround, if you don't need anything on the partition, is to boot from a FreeBSD USB, and run newfs on the partition. Then anaconda will see it.

As this seemed to be an edge case, and the developers couldn't reproduce it, on the bug I filed, I said nevermind. Did you ever install FreeBSD on this machine?

At any rate, once running newfs on the partition, if you click the arrow by Unknown, or whatever it says, it should show the partition.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1372919

In my case, even formatting the partition as an empty ext4 one didn't work--I could only get Anaconda to see it if I ran newfs, the FreeBSD command. Have you ever, out of curiosity, had a BSD installed on this machine?

My simple way to solve the aforementioned problem is with dd

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/the target partition , Count =100

With dd, I even recovered disks that "Windoz10" acted upon to falsely mark the drive as defective.