Hello everybody.

Just wanted to share some impressions from installing SL7. I know it's
not in final release state, but then again, most of these issues are
coming from upstream and likely not to be fixed in final release too;
they aren't serious but something to keep in mind.

The new installer looks beautiful, but frankly lacks some functionality
from the old one :-/ Note that I used Russian language during installation
so I'm providing my best guesses at how these options were named in
english installer.


One thing I couldn't find is ability to install "Minimal comfortable
set of packages for small server". The previous installer offered
flexibility where you could pick anything as a base ("server" or
"desktop" etc) and then add a few groups. Also it offered excellent
"Basic server" option, which made sure you will get at least some
comfort by installing various useful utilities. I usually used that +
some other groups to make sure you end up with at least basic hardware
diagnostic and monitoring (lm_sensors, mcelog, etc).

Now if you pick "minimal server" you can't add any more subgroups to it;
not just individual packages, you can't even add groups. You have to
choose "Infrastructure server" to be able to add at least something
else. But what you can add are mostly server group packages. There is
just no way to install e.g. "minimal server with typical hardware
monitoring and diagnostics packages and vim-enhanced" from installer at
all :(


Timezone configuration lacks (typical for most linux & unix systems
because it ensures that there is no way to get incorrect time during DST
change) option "hardware clock is in GMT". I pick timezone and it
assumes that bios stores local time. No way to change that from
installer.


The installer creates 200 Mb EFI System partition formatted in FAT16
(for UEFI installation). UEFI Specification declares that only FAT32 is
supported for EFI System partition located on hard drive - and the way
it's written, relying on anything beyond minimal specification might
work, but is wrong and will cause problems (good explanation here
https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/25/uefi-boot-how-does-that-actually-work-then/)

FAT16 partition is known to cause troubles at least with Windows 7
bootloader
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-efi/+bug/811485).
I know that it's highly unlikely that someone will be installing any EL7
distro on machine that dual boots into windows, but still, this is
something to keep in mind.

This bug happens because anaconda simply calls mkfs.vfat and by default
it creates FAT32 only for partitions > 512 MB (or something). So the way
to create correct EFI System partition is either do manual partitioning and
create it with the size of 550 MB, or create and format it manually before
installation - it can be 200 MB, but make sure to call mkfs.vfat -F 32
then.


Speaking of partitioning, new installer doesn't give an option "check &
correct automatic partitions result". Well, the functionality is still
there but you first have to go to manual partitioning for that.

During manual partitioning, installer wants you to keep /boot as
separate partition. It's beyond me why it can't be inside LVM with the
rest of partitions. It's supported for many years in grub2 and works
without issues - I'm pretty sure it'll work if done after installation,
but you just can't do it from the installer.

The automatic partitioning creates 200 MB EFI System partition, 500 MB
boot and huge LVM encompassing the rest of space. And, once again,
without asking user it allocates all the space to HUGE /home partition.
Why would everyone need all the space allocated to /home right away is
beyond me. This is LVM, one should be able to extend any partition which
needs space - but no, the space is already allocated. This is something
I really hope they'd have fixed in EL7 - while in fact they made matter
even worse. Before you could reduce filesystem size and free space in
LVM - now everything, including /boot and /home is formatted with xfs
which can't be reduced.

So when you find you need /var after installation you'll have to unmount
- remove - recreate /home. Which might be easier than booting to single
user mode and resizing /, but also more annoying if you already have
some data on /home.

Either way, be extra careful with automatic partitioning..


Another trouble I experienced (but this is highly system-specific) was
wrong video mode after installation. The system in question was
Supermicro X9SCAA with Atom N2800 CPU. During installation, installer
picked 1366x768 video mode despite connected monitor supporting up to
2560x1600 - this worked, however. But after installation during boot
monitor simply turns off. Some kind of framebuffer is active right after
grub starts booting the kernel as I could see pictures of penguin,
kernel finishes first stages of initialization, but some point it tries
to load gma500_gfx driver and output breaks.. X.org wasn't installed, it
must've tried to replace framebuffer driver with device-specific or
something.

Blacklisting gma500_gfx solved it.

-- 

Vladimir