ananconda upgrade won't mount partition

[David Morgan]

  I want it to upgrade a copy of RedHat8 but Anaconda can't mount the 
partition it's in, even though other software does.

The target hard disk:

/dev/hda1 - RedHat8 (whole filesystem)
/dev/hda2 - swap

Whenever RedHat8 boots hda1 gets  mounted ; you can also mount it under 
knoppix. Anaconda detects RedHat8's presence and  asks if I want to 
upgrade rather than do a fresh install. Saying yes gets error message:

  "Error mounting device hda1 as /: invalid argument",

the conjecture the partition probably isn't partitioned, and an OK 
button to reboot (no choice). At that point, if I  use the anaconda 
feature to get an install log (ctrl-alt-F4) I see it tried to mount 
/dev/hda1 on /mnt/sysimage. Then if I  use the anaconda feature to get a 
root prompt (ctrl-alt-F2) and execute "mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/sysimage," 
it mounts fine. But it's too late to proceed. The OK button will only 
reboot.

This happens with multiple installation disksets (RedHat9, Fedora2, and 
Fedora3). And with 2 different hard disks, the second a  functionally 
identical (rsync'd) copy of the first. It happens with whichever 
diskset, on either hard disk.

How do people perform upgrade-type installations? Any ideas what's wrong 
in these cases of mine?
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