[LAU] [OT] Fedora installation problem

[Paul Davis]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Dave Phillips <dlphillips at woh.rr.com> wrote:
> Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
>>
>> This looks like Grub2 stuff but I found here F14 uses Grub legacy ...
>
> Hi Jeremy,
>
> Thank you for the detailed instructions. Unfortunately they didn't work.
> /dev/sdb1 contains only the grub directory, the kernel image, and a few
> other files. Neither /root nor /boot are present on sdb1.
>
> When I tried to mount /dev/sdb2 I got an error that said the filesystem
> (LVM-something) was unrecognized. I find it fascinating that a file system
> installed by Fedora 14 is not recognizable by Fedora 14. Sigh.
>
> Well, unless anyone has a better idea, I'm not wasting any more time on
> Fedora, sad to say.

the fundamental problem here is that Fedora uses LVM as its default
partition type, and this is not supported by a variety of older/other
linux distributions.

you can mount the LVM disk, but not by just using mount(1). i've had
to do this a few times, and it is *MINDBLOWINGLY* difficult. i don't
even recall the command set i had to use. i think it was the md* tools
(mdadm etc).

the upside of using LVM is that you can endlessly reconfigure the
partition(s) (bigger or smaller), including adding/removing other
drives with almost no effort whatsoever. the downside is that if you
just want the disk to be /dev/sdb<foo> ... its not so easy.

i believe that fedora and/or redhat went through quite a long debate
about this, and ultimately decided that the overall benefits of LVM
vs. just ext(3|4) outweighed the drawbacks. obviously, this doesn't
mean that its true in every case. i'd also guess that its true for
most RedHat users and not true for most Fedora users.