upgrading dual boot fedora - partitions

I have a dual boot XP + FC3 I am upgrading to FC8. Problem is I don't
remember all those partition mysteries, and I don't want to stomp my XP
install. I don't care if I preserve any of my FC3 files, I just thought
an upgrade might be safer than a fresh install.

When I started to 'upgrade', I got a warning about /dev/hda6 not being
recognized or some such, although it didn't complain (yet) about the
other unlabeled partitions. I bailed at that point. The FC8 installer
docs mention there may be (new) problems with unlabeled partitions, and
it does appear that several are not labeled:

/dev/hda1, label=none, ntfs type 7 cyl: 0 7564
/dev/hda2, label="/boot", linux type 83 cyl: 7565 7575
/dev/hda3, label="/", linux type 83 cyl: 7576 10094
/dev/hda4, label=none, W95 ext'd LBA type f cyl:10095 10337
/dev/hda5, label=none, linux swap type 82 cyl:10095 10229
/dev/hda6, label=none, W95 FAT32 LBA type c cyl:10230 10336

I know that the 1st partition is XP, the next two are linux /boot and /.
The 4th partition is of extended type, which I believe is split into the
5th and 6th partition. The 5th partition is linux swap, and I think the
6th partition was just the odd bytes left over after splitting
everything up.

So the question is will the installer handle the unlabeled partitions,
or do I need to go in and add labels to them before installing?

tns1 wrote:
> I have a dual boot XP + FC3 I am upgrading to FC8. Problem is I don't
> remember all those partition mysteries, and I don't want to stomp my XP
> install. I don't care if I preserve any of my FC3 files, I just thought
> an upgrade might be safer than a fresh install.
>
> When I started to 'upgrade', I got a warning about /dev/hda6 not being
> recognized or some such, although it didn't complain (yet) about the
> other unlabeled partitions. I bailed at that point. The FC8 installer
> docs mention there may be (new) problems with unlabeled partitions, and
> it does appear that several are not labeled:
>
> /dev/hda1, label=none, ntfs type 7 cyl: 0 7564
> /dev/hda2, label="/boot", linux type 83 cyl: 7565 7575
> /dev/hda3, label="/", linux type 83 cyl: 7576 10094
> /dev/hda4, label=none, W95 ext'd LBA type f cyl:10095 10337
> /dev/hda5, label=none, linux swap type 82 cyl:10095 10229
> /dev/hda6, label=none, W95 FAT32 LBA type c cyl:10230 10336
>
> I know that the 1st partition is XP, the next two are linux /boot and /.
> The 4th partition is of extended type, which I believe is split into the
> 5th and 6th partition. The 5th partition is linux swap, and I think the
> 6th partition was just the odd bytes left over after splitting
> everything up.
>
> So the question is will the installer handle the unlabeled partitions,
> or do I need to go in and add labels to them before installing?

OK, so I booted in XP and added volume labels for partition 1 & 6. When
I booted in FC3, it didn't make any difference as far as $blkid and
fdisk are concerned. I guess volume labels are not the same as partition
labels.

The FC8 installer still says "can't mount /dev/hd6 - there may be
problems". If I instead go down the path of a fresh install and choose
to make custom partition assignments, the installer shows me a table of
what it thinks I have - very similar to what I get with $fdisk /dev/hda
except the "start" and "end" numbers (cylinders?) are not the same.

For instance instead of /dev/hda1 start 0 end 7564 I posted above, I get
/dev/sda1 start 1 end 7120. Without knowing more, it looks like the
installer is going to mess up my XP partition simply because it has the
math wrong. The installer does allow me to assign mount points for the
partitions, but it does not let me edit partition labels. If I really
have to do this, how would I?