Installation

Anaconda Changes

This section covers changes in the Anaconda installer, including changes in the graphical and text mode interactive installers, Kickstart, and installer boot options.

Changes in the Graphical Interface

  • A new, alternate partitioning interface provided by the the blivet-gui tool is now available in the manual partitioning screen. Unlike the existing partitioning interface, blivet-gui allows you to configure partitioning from the "bottom up": for example, in case of LVM you first create physical volumes, then a volume group, and then logical volumes, while in the old interface, you start with logical volumes and everything else is created automatically at first.

    The previous partitioning interface continues to be available as alongside the new one. For additional information, see the Fedora Project Wiki.

  • The installer now shows more detailed indication of current progress during all phases of the installation.

Changes in the Text Mode Interface

  • The text mode interface now supports setting up IP over Inifiniband IPoIB connections in the Networking screen.

  • The built-in help system, which was previously available in the graphical installation interface, has been extended to the text mode interface.

  • The Initial Setup post-setup text mode interface now runs on all available consoles.

Kickstart Changes

  • A new command, snapshot, has been added to provide LVM snapshot support for devices in an LVM thin pool. The command has the following syntax:

    snapshot vg/lv --name snapshot_name --when [post-install|pre-install]

    Available options are:

    • --name= - provide a name for the snapshot.

    • --when= - controls when the snapshot will be created. Use pre-install to create the snapshot before the installation begins, but after commands in the %pre part of the Kickstart are executed, or use post-install to create the snapshot after the installation and after commands in the %post part of the Kickstart are executed.

  • Three new options are now available for the autopart command:

    • --nohome - do not create a separate /home partition or volume if one would be created under partitioning rules

    • --noboot - do not create a separate /boot partition or volume

    • --noswap - do not create any swap space

Changes in Anaconda Boot Options

  • The inst.waitfornet= boot option is now available. Use it to force the installer to wait for network connectivity before starting the installer interface for a specified number of seconds - for example, inst.waitfornet=30 to wait 30 seconds.

  • A new option named inst.ksstrict is available. You can use it during a Kickstart-based installation to treat Kickstart warnings and error, meaning they will be printed on the output and the installation will terminate. Without specifying this option, warnings are printed to the log and the installation proceeds.

Other Anaconda Changes

  • Driver Update Disks can now be loaded from local disk devices.

  • Installclass can now modify rules for storage checks and their constraints.

ARM Support in Fedora Media Writer

Fedora Media Writer has gained the ability to write ARM images to SD cards and other portable media. Users, including those on Windows and macOS as well as on Fedora, will now be able to write Fedora images easily for Raspberry Pi 2 and above and for other supported ARM devices. Please note that this applies only for ARM devices where there are no changes or tweaks that need to be done to the Fedora image.

More information about this latest release of Fedora Media Writer can be found in the FMW 4.1.0 Release Notes.

DNF Rebased to 2.0

DNF, Fedora’s package manager, has been rebased to version 2.0, which brings many bugfixes and improvements over DNF 1.x, as well as changes required to fix incompatibilities with Yum, the predecessor of DNF. This required the introduction of certain incompatibilities between DNF 2.0 and DNF 1.x. See Changes in DNF-2 compared to DNF-1 for details.

DNF 2.0 provides usability improvements, including better messages during resolution errors, showing whether a package was installed as a weak dependency, better handling of obsolete packages, fewer tracebacks, and others.