Fedora Linux

This is the point of no return. Click Next to proceed with the upgrade, but remember that the upgrade process must run to completion and cannot be safely interrupted. The Fedora installer will analyze the software installed in your existing Fedora system, determine what needs to be updated, and install the new packages.

1.3.1.7. Performing a new Fedora installation

If any of your hard disks are empty and have not been previously used, the warning message displayed in Figure 1-14 will appear. If the drive contains data that you wish to preserve, abort the installation and boot into your existing operating system, figure out why the disk does not show a partition table, and restart the installation. Otherwise, click Yes to continue the installation.

Figure 1-14. Warning about a blank partition table

The installer will now ask what you want to do about partitioning, as shown in Figure 1-15 . In most cases, there are four options available:

Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout

This will wipe out everything on the drive and use the entire drive for Fedora Core. Select this option on a new computer or a computer you want to convert for use entirely with Fedora Core. This is also the right option to use when you are installing Linux on a second (or third) disk drive, leaving the software and data on the other drives untouchedbut be careful that only the Fedora Core drive is selected in the list of available disks.

Remove Linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout

Use this option if you are replacing an existing Linux installation and want to leave other operating systems (such as Windows) untouched.

Figure 1-15. Disk and partition strategy selection

Use free space on selected drives and create default layout

If you have unused space on your disk drive, or you have shrunk a Windows partition to free up some space, select this option.

Create custom layout

If you are familiar with partitioning and have special requirementsfor example, you wish to preserve only one filesystem (such as /home ) from a previous Linux installationselect this option.

If you have more than one disk drive installed, you will be able to select the drive(s) to be used for Fedora using the checkboxes in the rectangle labeled 'Select the drive(s) to use for this installation.' Refer to Table 1-4 for Linux disk names.

At the bottom of this screen, be sure to select the checkbox labeled 'Review and modify partitioning layout' so that you will have an opportunity to see the proposed disk layout before it is used. Click Next to continue.

If you have selected an option that involves removing an existing partition, you will see the partition- removal warning shown in Figure 1-16 . Review the information shown, and then click Yes to confirm that you are prepared to remove the partitions listed.

Figure 1-16. Partition removal warning

1.3.1.8. Partitioning layout

By default, Fedora Core uses a system called Logical Volume Management (LVM). A partition managed using LVM is called a physical volume (PV). Storage space from one or more PVs is used to create a pool of storage called a volume group (VG). Out of this pool of storage, one or more virtual partitions are created; each virtual partition is a logical volume (LV). Figure 1-17 illustrates the relationship between these components.

Figure 1-17. Relationship between LVM components

LVM has several advantages over traditional partitioning:

? Logical volumes can be resized, enabling you to shift space between filesystems without reinstalling the system.

? Logical volumes can span multiple physical volumes, enabling the use of filesystems that are larger than one physical disk.

? Additional storage can be added to existing filesystemsfor example, you can add a new disk drive and add that storage space to the home filesystem.

? Data can be migrated from one drive to another.

Chapter 6 delves into more detail regarding LVM.

Although logical volumes can be enlarged or reduced at any time, the ext3 filesystem that Fedora uses can be enlarged only while it is in use. It must not be in use when it is reduced in size. This can make it fairly complicated to shrink an ext3 partition. Because it's difficult to determine how much disk space each filesystem will require in the future, it is a good idea to make Fedora filesystems no larger than necessary at first, and then add space to them as required. This avoids the need to reduce the size of one LV in order to increase the size of another.

Unfortunately, the LVM system is too complex to use during the early stages of the booting process, so a system configured to use LVM must also have a small traditional partition for boot files.

In order to use Fedora Core's hibernate feature, you will also need a swap partition (either instead of or in addition to swapspace on a logical volume). See Lab 3.1, 'Power Management,' for more information on hibernation. 

If you have selected a partitioning option that includes the default layout and have selected the checkbox to review and modify the layout, the screen in Figure 1-18 will appear at this point in the installation.

Figure 1-18. Fedora Disk Druid partitioning screen

The table on the bottom half of the screen contains two sections: one for LVM volume groups and one for hard disks. The default layout creates a 100 MB boot partition, and takes all remaining available disk space on all drives and places it in a single volume group named VolGroup00 . The space in this volume group is then divided into two logical volumes: LogVol00 for the root filesystem and LogVol01 for swap space (virtual memory).

There are three improvements that we are going to make to the default Fedora Core partition/LVM layout:

? A separate LV will be used for the /home filesystem, so that users' home directories are separated from the operating system. This will enable you to wipe out the operating system and reinstall it (or install another distribution of Linux or a later version of Fedora Core) without affecting the users'