[linuxgnuru]

I have 10 on now, (X is messed up due to my tinkering but I'm used to console anyway) but now that I am wanting to upgrade to 12 using a USB DVD drive, the install gives me:

What partition and directory on that partition holds the installation image for Fedora? If you don't see the disk drive you're using listed here, press F2 to configure additional devices.

/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3
Directory holding image:

I'm guessing they mean the USB DVD drive but can not see it. Is there something I'm missing or can I not use this method of installation?

[mikez]

Fedora 12 has an unusual quirk - -

It refuses to install the root file system on anything other than ext4...
(Because it uses seLinux by default and Fedora's version requires ext4 attribute space.)

But it *can not* boot from an ext4 file system!
The /boot directory can not be on an ext4 system.

Now add in the fact that you are want to run this on a NetBook -
or any device that can suddenly "power off" (which a NetBook will do on
a "low battery" event)...
The ext4 (and xfs and maybe others) gain their speed by caching a large
proportion of the file system metadata in RAM.
Lose power -> lose RAM -> lose Metadata -> lose file system -> lose files.
Not even the ext4 file system repair tools will be able to get your files back. Sorry.

Your choices:
1) Accept the above situation, learn to love re-installing your file system:
* make one small partition (say, 500Mbytes), format as ext3, assign /boot to that.
* make another partition, format as ext4, assign as /

2) Disable seLinux during the install (there is an installer option for that)
* make all file systems ext3
(You'll have to google Fedora's site for that no-selinux/no-ext4 procedure.)

Written by someone who lost a 1Tbyte, Fedora-12/seLinux/ext4 file system
on a RAID-1 array due to a bad drive cable.
After repairs, the three ext3 file systems resync'd and recovered error
free, the ext4 file system did not survive.
Gone was a 1.9 million record database being developed on it.

My own personal solution:
I bit bucketed Fedora-12 and everything it brought with it.

[Lebenskuenstler]

Hi, what you describe here, is an error of the F12 install and live media releaed a few days ago. The modules for usb cd seem to miss on all the F12 releases. This is bug reported but not resolved yet.

But if you have a running linux, you can install F12 using two ways:

1. If you want to upgrade, use yum preupgrade. Please note, that you should update F10 to F11 and then F11 to F12.

2. If you want to perform a fresh install get the install.img, vmlinuz and initrd (http://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/...6/os/isolinux/ AND http://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/...386/os/images/ and place all this to /boot/ and make an entry in grub.conf.

title Fedora 12 (New installation)
    kernel /vmlinuz
    initrd /initrd.img

It will work. Note, the new via drivers do not work in F12. You will have to use openchrome.

LK