I am trying to install Fedora 34 workstation. Because my partition sizes were chosen for an earlier Linux (SL 6.3), my /boot partition is only 500 MB. Anaconda, I assume rightly, warns that this is less than the minimum recommended size of 512 MB, and even 1 GB is recommended. Of the two ways I've tried to go about resizing the partition, one I reject as unsafe, and the other fails with an error.

1. Automatic partitioning is something I won't do unless there is some way that I can see the partition layout and what Anaconda is about to do with my second disk's filesystem, which must be preserved and needs to be mounted at /usr2. There doesn't seem to be any way to display this information.

2. Custom partitioning fails with "new size same as old size". I've tried shrinking the partition that contains the root filesystem: still fails. I suspect the problem might be in the current partition layout:

sda1: Reserved by the system (105 MB, I assume the MBR is here).
sda2: Windows 10 (144 GB).
sda3: /boot (524 MB)
sda4: Extended Partition, contains...
sda5: / (287 GB)
sda6: swap (69 GB)

The third possibility is to delete all partitions past sda2, but I hesitate to do this without knowing for sure when that would take effect (an "Are you sure?" warning comes up immediately). If it happens immediately and my desired partition layout turns out to be impossible to create for some reason, then my system is toast.

If it only happens after clicking "Begin installation", then I'll try it. Is this correct? Otherwise, what advice can the experts here give me?

Liz

Since your root filesystem is in the extended partition you need to:

1. shrink the root partition which is already accomplished.
2. move swap to the left inside the extended partition.
3. shrink the extended partition.
4. move the extended partition to the right to allow unallocated space adjacent to sda3.

However, since you are completly replacing SL 6 you could just delete all of its filesystems and just manually partition creating partitions/sizes when installing Fedora. Make sure you backup all important data.

FYI with a legacy BIOS the MBR is the MBR, The reserved partition was created by Windows.

Thank you! I think it would be easiest just to delete partition 3 and the extended partition, assuming that is possible. So just to be clear: can I set up the new partition layout as a "dry run", to make sure the desired layout is allowed and there are no "gotchas"? IOW, if I go through the motions of deleting partitions and repartitioning in Anaconda, is it true that nothing is touched until "Begin installation" is clicked?

Yes, I have backups for everything critical (which is the stuff on the second disk, sdb)... but it would still be a major pain to restore everything from backup. The error I made when trying to create a bootable flash drive was to dd to /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdc. After restoring from the backup (which is on an external Passport USB drive physically connected to a Mac), I had to manually change permissions on many files (even ownership, since UIDs on SL 6 were not the same as under SL 7).

For clarity: I'm replacing SL 7.9 now, not SL 6.

Yes, nothing is touched until you begin installation.

With a legacy MBR /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6 are contained within the extended partition. Deleting /dev/sda3 would be the fastest way to free up space.

This is a fresh install which will overwrite everything so you will need to reinstall apps etc. Scientific linux 7 which is based on RHEL 7 was released in 2014 which would be equivalent to something like Fedora 20. There is a Fedora scientific version but have never looked at it.

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Thanks. I tried out doing a dry run in Anaconda, deleting /dev/sda[3-6] and reallocating the free space using a balance that's more appropriate for Fedora 34. It seems that it will work. Anaconda definitely doesn't like that I'm preserving /dev/sdb1, but it doesn't seem to be a real issue. I'll pull the trigger this weekend.

BTW, Re: Fedora Scientific... I downloaded the latest release about 2 weeks ago, but decided against it. It is attractive in some ways but I am used to Gnome, not KDE, and I'm not sure how painful it would be to install Gnome post-installation and make it my default desktop env. Thinking it might be easier to start with Fedora Workstation and add packages from Scientific as needed.