LinuxQuestions.org - Custom install to specific partition

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Custom install to specific partition

I am getting what I feel are conflicting messages when trying to do a custom install of Fedora 11. I'm not "entirely" a newbie, just to Fedora 11.

My system has two hard drives; one came with the system and the second one I added. The first contains the original Windows Vista system and the second has been partitioned as follows:

500G for data and work area for Windows systems
60G for experimenting with Windows 7
10G for Linux Swap
50G for Ubuntu Linux
40G for Fedora Linux
(rest as yet unassigned)

When I partitioned the drive, I set the Fedora partition as Ext3 as is the Ubuntu one.

When attempting the custom install, I selected the swap partition and edited it to indicate that it was to be for swap. I then selected the Fedora partition and edited it to be the root or "/" partition.

But the installation then told me that it had to be an Ext4 partition so I edited it again and changed the type to Ext4. But then I received an error message to the effect that I can't have a bootable partition on
Ext4.

This is turning ut to be a lot harder than the Ubuntu installation which went very smoothly. I must be missing something somewhere....

Thanks....

You need 2 partitions.
/ boot ex3
and a other ext 4
and swap you do not a swap file yet

Add on a /boot partition. This would be wanted to install kernels. I normally allocate 128MB for /boot , but it better you give atleast 250MB.

Try it and let us know !!

Hi,

Why do you both think there is the need for a '/boot' with ext3 extensions in order to utilize ext4 using Fedora 11?

It is 'GRUB' that has the restriction that requires the use of a ext3 '/boot'. Therefore your kernel needs require some space with ext3. So the choice of '/boot' with a ext3 filesystem will allow this. If you plan on experimenting with your kernels then you should allocate enough space to do so.

Another great reason to use 'lilo'! :)

Quote:

excerpt from 'ext4_Howto';

For people who are running Fedora

Recent Fedora is generally very up to date with respect to ext4 code in kernelspace and userspace.

Fedora 11 uses the ext4 filesystem as the default root filesystem, and as such should generally contain the most uptodate code, features, and fixes. It will initially be based on the 2.6.29.x kernel series.

Fedora 10 currently has a kernel based on 2.6.27 that has working ext4 support. It is missing some of the latest fixes and performance optimizations. A 2.6.29 kernel update should be available soon, with more up-to-date ext4 code.

Fedora 10 and later has all of the basic infrastructure needed to be able to run ext4, including updated udev, blkid, and other bits needed for ext4 to be a transparently recognized filesystem.

Fedora 9 has only rudimentary ext4 support, and no significant ext4 updates are planned in that release.

No version of Fedora at this time (including F11) has support in grub for booting from ext4, so /boot must be ext3 or some other supported filesystem. The anaconda installer enforces this restriction.

OK, I think all of these good answers are telling me one thing: I need to do a lot more reading befire I can set this up properly. :newbie:

Following earlier instructions I found when first adding Ubuntu to my Vista +Windows 7 setup, I have the Windows bootloader in primary control where I can select Vista (default), Windows 7, or Ubuntu (where the Grub loader takes over).

So now I see that Grub can't boot to Ext4 and LILO is better.

So I have a lot more to read.

Thanks to all who responded.