On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 17:11 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote: > On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 16:17 -0600, Andrew McNabb wrote: > > While installing Fedora 16 Alpha, I ran into some problems that turned > > out to be caused by the installer formatting with a GPT rather than an > > MBR partition table. > > > > I would like to understand the change and its implications, and I have > > unsuccessfully tried to track down more information. I haven't been > > able to find anything in the Fedora 16 Alpha Release Notes or the Grub2 > > feature page. The only definitive reference I've been able to find is > > the comment "x86 uses GPT disklabels by default on all machines, even > > non-EFI" on the Anaconda/Changes wiki page. > > > > There seem to be some complications associated with the change. For > > example, Windows can only support GPT on UEFI machines, so dual-booting > > appears to be unsupported (I could not find an option for MBR partition > > tables in the installer). > > > > Where should I look for more information? Thanks. > > To boot to a GPT disk from BIOS (rather than EFI) you need a BIOS boot > partition. If you use one of the automatic partitioning methods, rather > than manual partitioning, F16's installer will create one for you. If > you choose manual partitioning on a BIOS system and don't create a BIOS > boot partition, anaconda will pop up a (somewhat cryptic) warning. This is changing from a suggestion to a requirement, based on the fact that grub2 will not even try to install itself without the bios boot partition. > > If you're installing alongside an existing copy of Windows I believe > anaconda ought to leave the disk label alone (MSDOS) anyway, though I'm > not sure we've tested that. It should only write a new one if you're > blowing away any existing partitions on the disk, I think. (IMBW on this > one). This is correct. It's also true that if you create an msdos/mbr partition table on your disk prior to installation and then choose any option except for "Use All Space" (or "clearpart --all" in kickstart) anaconda will not destroy your existing partition table. > -- > Adam Williamson > Fedora QA Community Monkey > IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora > http://www.happyassassin.net > -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
