Re-enabling autofs (aka automount) after Fedora 17 upgrade

$ sudo systemctl enable autofs.service
ln -s '/usr/lib/systemd/system/autofs.service' '/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/autofs.service'
$ sudo systemctl start autofs.service

Modify auto.smb to avoid se-linux denial on root password request when auto-mounting smb shares

Change line ->
#opts="-fstype=cifs"

to ->

opts="-fstype=cifs,guest"

Upgrade Fedora 16 to 17 using pre-upgrade

The process was quite smooth, as described here -

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade

I then hit this (I think that it is expecting grub2)?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade#Upgrade_does_not_install_upon_reboot

I then tried using -

Method 2: Edit the Grub menu.lst File

but hit this error -

dracut Warning: /dev/root does not exist.

For which I found, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=806966 

and realised the solution was to copy the complete kernel line from the grub2 file /boot/grub2/grub.cfg 

into /boot/grub/grub.conf, as below -

title Fedora Upgrade

root (hd0,4)

kernel /upgrade/vmlinuz preupgrade repo=hd::/var/cache/yum/preupgrade ks=hd:UUID=f83bc73c-070b-4e9a-8f0e-c46b56ec8a5a:/upgrade/ks.cfg stage2=hd:UUID=f83bc73c-070b-4e9a-8f0e-c46b56ec8a5a:/upgrade/squashfs.img

initrd /upgrade/initrd.img

savedefault

boot

Having fixed this, the upgrade went smoothly, and F17 is looking great!

Boot Fedora 17 Live from partition on hard drive

'poor man's install', again for Fedora 17. (See my earlier post for Fedora 16)

Use fdisk to create a FAT32 partition large enough to hold the live distro, in my case /dev/sda8 below
Format it using mkfs or gparted.


Command (m for help): p


Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xaa9baa9b


   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    24578047    12288000   27  Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2   *    24578048    24782847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        24782848   502260399   238738776    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       502261760   625142447    61440344    5  Extended
/dev/sda5       502263808   503287807      512000   83  Linux
/dev/sda6       503289856   605689855    51200000   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       605691904   613883903     4096000   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8       613885952   625141759     5627904    b  W95 FAT32

Mount the iso image, and copy files from it 

su

cd /mnt/

mkdir iso live

mount -o loop -t iso9660 ~/Downloads/Fedora-Live.iso iso

mount -t vfat /dev/sda8 live

cp -r iso/* live/

Examine the grub conf on the live distro -

cat /mnt/live/EFI/boot/grub.conf

..

title Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.is
  findiso
  kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=live:LABEL=Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.is rootfstype=auto ro liveimg quiet  rhgb
  initrd /isolinux/initrd0.img..

Find the UUID of your live partition -

[steve@aspireone753 ~]$ ls -lF /dev/disk/by-uuid

total 0

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Nov 13 11:33 B381-1423 ->; ../../sda8

Then edit the regular grub.conf on your main linux installation. Changes needed are shown in bold.

sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

paste in a new entry, copied from the live distro -

title Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.is
  root (hd0,7)
  kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=UUID=B381-1423 rootfstype=auto rw liveimg quiet  rhgb
  initrd /isolinux/initrd0.img

Reboot, and choose the live distro at the grub menu.