Fedora 24 Beta Looks Nice, But Will They Ever Stop Mucking Up Anaconda?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 24 Beta Looks Nice, But Will They Ever Stop Mucking Up Anaconda?

Following this morning's release of the Fedora 24 Beta I immediately fired it up on a few test systems...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...rst-Impression

[droidhacker]

I liked the old anaconda better. It was also a heck of a lot more reliable. Every release with the new anaconda has been difficult to install. I've resolved myself to making the smallest number of changes during install as possible, and dealing with the balance of customization after you get a booting system.

[You-]

Old Anaonda had an option to "wipe existing Linux partitions" which was handy. With new anaconda, I always have to cross my fingers that things work as I expect them to - which they mostly do, but there is no confidence in it.

[sgallagh]

If that machine had a pre-existing firmware or software RAID setup that you were installing over, you may have hit a known bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1259953

The fix wasn't ready in time for Beta, but will be fixed for Final. The workaround is actually to just try a second time; if you're hitting this issue, it should work on the second try.

It's ugly and annoying (and a bad first impression, we agree!) but given that it was a pre-release, we came down on the side of not holding up the Beta release since the workaround of "just try again" was judged as not being too onerous.

[devius]

Love that hostname: phoronix-ms-7885-Invalid-entry-length-16-Fixed-up-to-11

[droidhacker]

If that machine had a pre-existing firmware or software RAID setup that you were installing over, you may have hit a known bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1259953

The fix wasn't ready in time for Beta, but will be fixed for Final. The workaround is actually to just try a second time; if you're hitting this issue, it should work on the second try.

It's ugly and annoying (and a bad first impression, we agree!) but given that it was a pre-release, we came down on the side of not holding up the Beta release since the workaround of "just try again" was judged as not being too onerous.

Sounds like you work for RH?
One thing that I would strongly suggest for anaconda, if you fixed THIS, it would really help everyone overlook whatever bugs there are.... don't bail out on the first sign of error!!!! The most frustrating part of the new anaconda is that whenever ANY stupid thing goes wrong, it completely gives up and wants a reboot. Even restarting just anaconda would be an improvement, or preferably, go back a step when something bad happens.

[tessio]

Debian text installer is the simplest and most reliable installer there is. Keep it simple, stupid.

[Michael]

If that machine had a pre-existing firmware or software RAID setup that you were installing over, you may have hit a known bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1259953

The fix wasn't ready in time for Beta, but will be fixed for Final. The workaround is actually to just try a second time; if you're hitting this issue, it should work on the second try.

It's ugly and annoying (and a bad first impression, we agree!) but given that it was a pre-release, we came down on the side of not holding up the Beta release since the workaround of "just try again" was judged as not being too onerous.

That system has no RAID form of any kind.

[buzzrobot]

Anyone else with a Skylake able to boot any of the spins?

[linuxjacques]

The last couple of released I've had terrible problems with the Alphas due to anaconda. But the Betas were mostly OK.
That's why I skipped Alpha this time, but it looks like it's now OK for anaconda to have issues like this even in Beta. :-|

From https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F24_bugs

"On some setups, installing Fedora over existing firmware or software RAID can cause anaconda to crash. The crash itself messes the disks a little and renders the RAID unusable."

This looks bad.

Also, I wish the Common Bugs page had been updated for the Beta as it's difficult to tell which issues are still relevant.