[mythtv-users] upgrade Fedora 9 to 12?

[Jarod Wilson]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Udo van den Heuvel <udovdh at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On 2010-02-16 19:48, Jarod Wilson wrote:
>>> Of course there's no room elsewhere on the system. I can explain why
>>> this choice is absurd, especially when upgrading.
>> And I can explain why it isn't. /boot is the only mount point
>> guaranteed to be 99.999% automatically discoverable and mountable.
>
> Of course a 'normal' kernel can work in that space, so why not an
> upgrade situation?

You trimmed the part where I explained the problem here. Your
not-built-in driver modules are in the anaconda initrd. They can only
be loaded *from a partition that doesn't need them*. i.e., /boot. I'm
sure there is some sort of multiple initrd chaining that could be done
to get around this somehow, but right now, it ain't implemented.

> /boot is intended to hold a kernel, not mini-installs needed for some
> upgrade method.

So don't use it.

> A possibility to park the install ramdisk elsewhere and start the kernel
> pointing to it is of course a solution.

...which doesn't Just Work without user intervention, which is one of
the primary goals with pre-upgrade, as I understand it. Otherwise,
you're right back to pretty much doing it by hand as you always have.

> In upgrade situations we have to deal with historically grown situations
> so demanding 200+ GB's with the flexibility of a 1980's procedure is not
> of this time.

There was an unexpected (by the pre-upgrade authors) hefty increase in
the size of the anaconda initrd, mostly due to dracut. Shit happens.
The quick future-proofing fix was to save more space for /boot.
Longer-term, something less clunky might be developed. It is what it
is right now.

> Why can't I plug in extra storage and use that? Or free up some space
> elsewhere and use that?
> I.e.: have more flexibility?

See again the design goal of no user-specific customization required.
But really, take it up with the author(s) of pre-upgrade, not me. I
don't actually use it, nor did I have anything to do with writing it,
I'm just stating the reason it is like it is right now. See also:
kickstarts, there's your flexibility to do whatever you want.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com