5:33 p.m.
Today I bought 2 3 TB hard drives to use in my new server.
I'm writing this in case other people aren't aware that some of the
traditional hard drive management methods don't work for drives larger than
2 TB.
Specifically, fdisk and MSDOS type partition tables.
Here is how I created a single partition on my 3 TB drives.
Via parted.
#parted -a optimal /dev/sdb
(parted) rm 1 <- this removed the 2TB partition that fdisk made.
NOTE: fdisk has a 2 TB limit, apparently forced by MSDOS style partition
tables. Ever heard the story about how the width of a donkey ultimately
determined the diameter of the space shuttle ?
(parted) mklabel gpt <- this is NOT making a label for the drive. "man
parted" is your friend.
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1 -1 <- this makes the partition itself, using
the entire drive, which is what I wanted.
(parted) print
(parted) quit
# mkfs -text4 /dev/sdb1 <- this formats the partition
#e2label /dev/sdb1 myth <- this gives it a label, as used by mount in
fstab, ie "LABEL=..."
Via gparted.
It turns out that the whole process can be done from within gparted, if you
know what you are doing.
The first thing you need to do is create the partition table.
IF you have used fdisk on the drive previously, the partition table type is
going to MSDOS, which has the 2TB limit. If you continue with the MSDOS
partition table, gparted will allow you to select a 3TB partition to make,
but it will give you the following error:
partition length of 5860528002 sectors exceeds the
msdos-partition-table-imposed maximum of 4294967295
To get around this, select Advanced on the partition table options window
and set the partition table type to gpt.
Then you can proceed as you normally would to partition a drive with
gparted. Ie add new partition(s), set the partition type, labels, etc.
At this point you have an ext4 formatted 3TB drive.
However, in F15 KDE at least, it doesn't seem to automount like a drive with
an MSDOS partition table. The drive will not automatically appear in the
Places column in Dolphin, for example. Nor will it appear in the list
created by df.
However, it is available to manually mount. Ie, #mount /dev/sdb1 temp,
just like the old days.* And once you do that, it appears in the df list,
though still not in the Places column in Dolphin.
I hope this helps someone.
*This might be particular to my machine being that the drive is a hot swap
SATA device and I did not remove it and replace it. However, drives with
MSDOS type partition tables auto mounted using the very same command
sequence.
6:07 p.m.
On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 17:58 -0400, David wrote:
On 10/1/2011 5:39 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 06:12, Marko Vojinovic<vvmarko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> As a natural consequence, Linux is a priori not designed for
>> noobs and newbies who do not want to learn.
>
> I think this is a problem.
>
> When I started using Linux back in 1999 (Caldera OpenLinux before the
> SCO fiasco, fwiw(, I expected the user-friendliness to eventually
> improve. It did not. But my expectations were not related to myself,
> but thinking about friends and family I wanted to convert to Linux.
>
> Back in the OS/2 Warp days, IBM also thought "SYS 3175" was an OK
> error message and that end users didn' t need more human-friendly
> error messages.
>
> FC
>
> PS: Just including aliases for common Windows commands the users are
> expected to find would have helped a lot of newcomers, but actually
> the general concensus seems to be "this is Linux, it's not designed to
> please Windows users, windows users should learn Linux and how it
> works, instead".
This is not meant as a Flame War starter. But...
I agree with you. Grandma and grandpa, mom and dad. Billy and Bobbie can
go to a store and actually buy a computer, in boxes, come home and
connect the pieces and *it just works*. *Everything just works*. Then
along comes a Linux Guru friend and he replaces their OS. And suddenly
things get complicated. And things stop working. Unless they get some
strange file from some man that lives in a cellar in some country with a
really odd name. Or perhaps things work but not quite as well.
As much as *I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop until
that happens. Until it *just works*. IMO of course.
----
I wholeheartedly disagree.
Apple has never tried to make a Macintosh emulate or substitute for
Windows. Yes, they do implement methods to accommodate a Windows based
network schema and data interchange but so does Linux (in fact, I think
Linux does a better job of it).
A computer and its underlying OS stands on its own... based on its own
usability and merits.
Specifically, I worked at a company that had bought 2 batches of
different computers from the same manufacturer (memory says it was Acer
but it may have been Asus). Anyway, one of them only had support (ie,
driver downloads) for Windows XP and the other for Vista+ (Vista or
Windows 7). We wanted to swap hard drives from type of box to the
other... that wasn't going to work. A single image... forgetaboutit. Of
course Linux would have been able to run on either one without breaking
a sweat.
Then there's the absurd notions that seems to permeate some people's
thinking is that it is useful, important, necessary or even possible to
supplant Windows with Linux. That isn't the point of Linux, not the
mission of Fedora and thus the thinking would by all indications seem
out of bounds except to those who wish it were so.
A few years ago, I switched a non-profit corp over to Fedora (starting
w/ FC6) and they made the transition fairly easily and I would suggest
for the most part, they were casual computer users and the more
knowledgeable users transitioned rather quickly. For the most part, it
only required a little guidance on where there files were stored and
what the applications were named and where to find them.
Adults didn't intrinsically know how to use Windows - they bought books
or watched someone or spent time playing around and thus whatever
knowledge of Windows that they possess is leveraged already when moving
to Macintosh or Linux.
Fedora out of the box just works as well as Windows would work except no
one really has that opportunity since all of those computers out of the
box boot Windows so to actually get an out of the box experience for
Linux requires an initial hurdle (actually I think Dell sells some
rather pricey workstations with Ubuntu pre-installed but I don't know
anyone that has purchased them).
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
7:57 p.m.
On Fri, 2011-09-30 at 15:12 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 14:54, linux guy
<linuxguy123(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Lets be clear here. There isn't really a bug in fdisk.
If it doesn't want the user about this, I consider it a bug. lack of
documentation and human-readable feedback is a bug. :)
----
I suppose if you ignore the fdisk man page your argument would have some
weight but alas...
In a DOS-type partition table the starting offset and the size of each
partition is stored in two ways: as an absolute number of sectors (given
in 32 bits), and as a Cylinders/Heads/Sectors triple (given in 10+8+6
bits). The former is OK -- with 512-byte sectors this will work up to 2
TB.
you also wrote...
This exemplifies the problem with FOSS software and the
"here's the
recipe on how to fix it" culture, . Don't get me wrong, I'm not
throwing blame around, I just want to say that:
1. Instead of posting "recipes" on how to fix limitations of the
software, it'd be MUCH MORE helpful to FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS
with the software, so that:
a. A BUG REPORT ON FDISK is entered, so that:
* It works correctly on drives bigger than 2TB, or...
I think it actually does work on drives bigger than 2TB but not
partitions bigger than 2TB... there is a distinction that seems to be
getting lost here - and again, there's the man page for fdisk that does
actually attempt to explain it for those that actually bother to read
it.
I don't think this exemplifies the problem with FOSS software except for
maybe indicating that sometimes the information is there for all to see
but some people don't actually look and rely upon misinformed web pages,
people, etc.
----
Like you say, firing fdisk on a >2TB disk should give users SOME
WARNING about it not being able to do everything users otherwise
expect it to do. :)
----
Again, you could use fdisk to create smaller than 2TB partitions so I
think the issue is muddy at best.
----
And when I sad "file a bug" I meant "file a
report" on Bugzilla or
whatever is used for bug tracking and RFEs by the particular project /
component.
----
never hurts to file a bug report I guess but I would think that reading
the man page before doing so would be rather useful.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
3:28 a.m.
On Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:38:13 -0700, JZ (Joe) wrote:
On 10/01/2011 06:28 PM, David wrote:
> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;
> rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090825 Fedora/2.0.0.23-1.fc10
> Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.6.666"
>
> Which looks like FC 10 and TBird 2.0.0.23 to me.
[joe@khorlia Desktop]$ uname -r
2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686
I have no idea how it could claim Fedora 10 as I went from 9 to 11
without ever using 10, just as I'm skipping 15 and for the same reason.
And Thunderbird claims to be version 3.1.14.
A bug? Or a configuration setting? Have you done a fresh install or an upgrade?
Could it be that the old version string has entered your preferences and overrides
the default?
The F14 package certainly sets up a Fedora User-Agent string that
matches its build version-release:
$ grep thunderbird_ver thunderbird.spec
%define thunderbird_version 3.1.15
Version: %{thunderbird_version}
%{__cat} %{SOURCE12} | %{__sed} -e
's,THUNDERBIRD_RPM_VR,%{thunderbird_version}-%{release},g' \
cp objdir-tb/mozilla/dist/%{name}-%{thunderbird_version}*.crashreporter-symbols.zip
$RPM_BUILD_ROOT$DEBUG_LIB_DIR/debug%{mozappdir}
For F11, last Thunderbird was 3.0.5. And that one would also not report
being 2.0.0.23-1.fc10,
http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/updates/11/SRP...
unless an older User-Agent id somehow overrides the default one.
--
Fedora release 16 (Verne) - Linux 3.1.0-1.fc16.x86_64
loadavg: 0.12 0.07 0.11
6:32 p.m.
Searching google, here is what Dell has to say:
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/3TB+drives%3A+OS+Behavior+Matrix
I need a drive that I can partition at least to
15 partitions as I use many different OSes
(windows, mac, linux) and it appears to me
that I cannot use the MSDOS partition tables
for drives larger than 2GB. Currently, I have
been using 2x2GB Hitachi DeskStar drives and
they work wonderfully with MSDOS partitions.
So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
multiboot operations.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, as I
did not do my homework before I bought a
3TB drive... drat! ;)
6:32 p.m.
On 10/1/2011 7:07 PM, Craig White wrote:
On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 17:58 -0400, David wrote:
> On 10/1/2011 5:39 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 06:12, Marko Vojinovic<vvmarko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>> As a natural consequence, Linux is a priori not designed for
>>> noobs and newbies who do not want to learn.
>>
>> I think this is a problem.
>>
>> When I started using Linux back in 1999 (Caldera OpenLinux before the
>> SCO fiasco, fwiw(, I expected the user-friendliness to eventually
>> improve. It did not. But my expectations were not related to myself,
>> but thinking about friends and family I wanted to convert to Linux.
>>
>> Back in the OS/2 Warp days, IBM also thought "SYS 3175" was an OK
>> error message and that end users didn' t need more human-friendly
>> error messages.
>>
>> FC
>>
>> PS: Just including aliases for common Windows commands the users are
>> expected to find would have helped a lot of newcomers, but actually
>> the general concensus seems to be "this is Linux, it's not designed to
>> please Windows users, windows users should learn Linux and how it
>> works, instead".
>
> This is not meant as a Flame War starter. But...
>
> I agree with you. Grandma and grandpa, mom and dad. Billy and Bobbie can
> go to a store and actually buy a computer, in boxes, come home and
> connect the pieces and *it just works*. *Everything just works*. Then
> along comes a Linux Guru friend and he replaces their OS. And suddenly
> things get complicated. And things stop working. Unless they get some
> strange file from some man that lives in a cellar in some country with a
> really odd name. Or perhaps things work but not quite as well.
>
> As much as *I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop until
> that happens. Until it *just works*. IMO of course.
----
I wholeheartedly disagree.
Apple has never tried to make a Macintosh emulate or substitute for
Windows. Yes, they do implement methods to accommodate a Windows based
network schema and data interchange but so does Linux (in fact, I think
Linux does a better job of it).
A computer and its underlying OS stands on its own... based on its own
usability and merits.
Specifically, I worked at a company that had bought 2 batches of
different computers from the same manufacturer (memory says it was Acer
but it may have been Asus). Anyway, one of them only had support (ie,
driver downloads) for Windows XP and the other for Vista+ (Vista or
Windows 7). We wanted to swap hard drives from type of box to the
other... that wasn't going to work. A single image... forgetaboutit. Of
course Linux would have been able to run on either one without breaking
a sweat.
Then there's the absurd notions that seems to permeate some people's
thinking is that it is useful, important, necessary or even possible to
supplant Windows with Linux. That isn't the point of Linux, not the
mission of Fedora and thus the thinking would by all indications seem
out of bounds except to those who wish it were so.
A few years ago, I switched a non-profit corp over to Fedora (starting
w/ FC6) and they made the transition fairly easily and I would suggest
for the most part, they were casual computer users and the more
knowledgeable users transitioned rather quickly. For the most part, it
only required a little guidance on where there files were stored and
what the applications were named and where to find them.
Adults didn't intrinsically know how to use Windows - they bought books
or watched someone or spent time playing around and thus whatever
knowledge of Windows that they possess is leveraged already when moving
to Macintosh or Linux.
Fedora out of the box just works as well as Windows would work except no
one really has that opportunity since all of those computers out of the
box boot Windows so to actually get an out of the box experience for
Linux requires an initial hurdle (actually I think Dell sells some
rather pricey workstations with Ubuntu pre-installed but I don't know
anyone that has purchased them).
Fedora 'out of the box' works for me too. But then I don't use laptops
and they seem to be a major source of problem(s). From what I read on
various lists. And I avoid Dell like a contagious infection (ducks under
desk) because I see many with problems.
Those were the 'users' I was referring to above. Now when Linux will
really, really do stuff, like Windows games for example, then we just
might get the 'average person' to switch to Linux. Tux Racer is *not* a
real game BTW. :-)
--
David
4:55 p.m.
..snip..
PS: Just including aliases for common Windows commands the users are
expected to find would have helped a lot of newcomers, but actually
the general concensus seems to be "this is Linux, it's not designed to
please Windows users, windows users should learn Linux and how it
works, instead".
Actually, no. It causes more confusion since the options taken by
windows commands will be different. Adding aliases, just gives a false
sense of similarity. As soon as the transitioned user starts using
these commands, he'll realise he'll have to learn the Linux way
anyway.
So, its not so simple. Been there, done that!
Jitesh
8:28 p.m.
On 10/1/2011 8:00 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 10/01/2011 04:26 PM, David wrote:
> But I would hope that you keep her Ubuntu more up-to-date than you do
> your Fedora. The Fedora, F-10, that you are using and the TBird that you
> are using, 2.0.0.24, were both EOL years ago.
What are you talking about? I skipped F 10, going from F 9 to F 11, and
am now using F 14 with the latest version of Thunderbird that Fedora
provides. In fact, I use yumex every morning to keep it up to date. I
don't know who you're thinking of, but it's certainly not me.
Really?
Your email says :
"Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 17:00:08 -0700
From: Joe Zeff <***(a)***.**> <<< I edited this part
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090825 Fedora/2.0.0.23-1.fc10
Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.6.666"
Which looks like FC 10 and TBird 2.0.0.23 to me.
Maybe you have a really old configuration file hanging around?
--
David
11:26 p.m.
On Sat October 1 2011, David wrote:
The company that I work for has it's own server and the software that I
use every day, provided by them, runs on Windows. None of it has a Linux
clone and I seriously doubt that any of it ever will. And none of it
will run on WINE (why would anyone actually try to do that?) or in any
emulator (again why even try?) so I use what works.
Just to jump into the middle of this here... I'm the IT manager for a small
carpet manufacturer in Georgia (USA.) We run our production from order
entry to shipping the carpet out the door off some software that runs on the
AS/400. I got tired of having to deal with machines running Windows 98 as
"smart" terminals so I got some higher-end "clunker" machines (P3/P4)
and
installed Linux on 'em.
I tried to get the official AS/400 IBM client for Linux to work. Couldn't do
it. Wouldn't work -- too many dependencies. I tried the Linux version of a
freeware Terminal Emulator. It, too, had too many dependencies. So, I
installed the Windows version of the SAME Terminal Emulation software that
I'd tried to install previously using Wine and it installed and ran
perfectly.
All that to say that you might be surprised at what will run in Wine under
Linux! :D
10:42 p.m.
On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 21:21 -0400, David wrote:
But I live in the real world. More people use Mac computers and
software
than use Linux and I only actually know one person that uses a Mac. And
it is a new one and he runs Windows on it. And, unfortunately perhaps,
Linux is still not really ready for that world. The real one.
----
The real world? The way you speak reminds me of elephants at a very
early age are tied with heavy ropes or chains that they can't break from
and as they get older, the ropes are very thin and the elephants just
gave up trying to break free so they never do.
The real world is compromised of improvised networks, some meticulously
managed and some deliberately unmanaged and most in the middle
somewhere. My employer provides everyone with an iMac or PowerBook and
few shared resources, a USB hard disk for TM backups and I sort of hate
it but that's because my primary environment is managing 50+ Linux
servers.
The days of proprietary / OS specific applications that need to be
installed and maintained on everyone's desktop system are pretty much
numbered in favor of web driven or SAAS but will make the OS somewhat
meaningless anyway. That's the real world.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
10:38 p.m.
On 10/01/2011 06:28 PM, David wrote:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090825 Fedora/2.0.0.23-1.fc10
Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.6.666"
Which looks like FC 10 and TBird 2.0.0.23 to me.
[joe@khorlia Desktop]$ uname -r
2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686
I have no idea how it could claim Fedora 10 as I went from 9 to 11
without ever using 10, just as I'm skipping 15 and for the same reason.
And Thunderbird claims to be version 3.1.14.
7 p.m.
On 10/01/2011 04:26 PM, David wrote:
But I would hope that you keep her Ubuntu more up-to-date than you
do
your Fedora. The Fedora, F-10, that you are using and the TBird that you
are using, 2.0.0.24, were both EOL years ago.
What are you talking about? I skipped F 10, going from F 9 to F 11, and
am now using F 14 with the latest version of Thunderbird that Fedora
provides. In fact, I use yumex every morning to keep it up to date. I
don't know who you're thinking of, but it's certainly not me.
6:59 p.m.
On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 16:32 -0700, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
Searching google, here is what Dell has to say:
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/3TB+drives%3A+OS+Behavior+Matrix
I need a drive that I can partition at least to
15 partitions as I use many different OSes
(windows, mac, linux) and it appears to me
that I cannot use the MSDOS partition tables
for drives larger than 2GB. Currently, I have
been using 2x2GB Hitachi DeskStar drives and
they work wonderfully with MSDOS partitions.
So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
multiboot operations.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, as I
did not do my homework before I bought a
3TB drive... drat! ;)
----
you can use GPT and make partitions, virtual disks, LVM, etc. as you see fit.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
6:55 p.m.
On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 19:32 -0400, David wrote:
Fedora 'out of the box' works for me too. But then I
don't use laptops
and they seem to be a major source of problem(s).
----
laptops often have short run, proprietary hardware that if no one
provides ample feedback to developers, may very well have some
unintended features (nice way of saying bugs).
----
From what I read on
various lists. And I avoid Dell like a contagious infection (ducks under
desk) because I see many with problems.
----
I don't have a problem with Dell but everyone is free to choose to buy
whatever suits them. Dell & HP have been strong supporters of Dell and
for a few years, Dell's point man on Linux was a member of the Fedora
board.
----
Those were the 'users' I was referring to above. Now when
Linux will
really, really do stuff, like Windows games for example, then we just
might get the 'average person' to switch to Linux. Tux Racer is *not* a
real game BTW. :-)
----
I'm sort of out of touch on games myself but I think what you are
specifically referring to are the games which drive high end hardware
sales (overclock motherboards, high end video cards, etc.) and the open
source platform isn't especially well suited for that environment at
this point. I'm not sure that I would suggest that this type of user is
actually the 'average person' as you describe it but certainly a
significant percentage of the user base.
I think that if you really wanted to examine market segmentation in a
reasonably meaningful way, you would be looking at business use and not
just home use. You would consider that many large corporations do indeed
use Linux as it clearly drives down the CTO for each desktop unit
represented whereas the Macintosh is clearly the worst in this category.
Perhaps the most available market segment is the small business category
and that segment has been dominated by 'must have' software such as
Quickbooks but as more software moves to the cloud and becomes SAAS,
then the desktop OS becomes less significant - at least in terms of
having specific needs drive specific choices. The home user market is
clearly segmenting at this point with the tablets stealing much of the
home laptop and desktop sales.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
6:38 p.m.
On 10/01/2011 04:35 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 20:32, Daniel B. Thurman
<dant(a)cdkkt.com> wrote:
> So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
> drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
> that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
> multiboot operations.
Surely you meant 2TB. :)
FC
Oh geez/terra! Thanks for correcting me!
6:26 p.m.
On 10/1/2011 7:09 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 10/01/2011 03:53 PM, David wrote:
> Curious. Is/was her Windows a recent purchase on a recent computer? And
> what 'did not work'.
She'd been running Win2K on that box for several years. It required the
same almost constant maintenance (Scandisk, defrag, anti-virus and so
on) that all Windows boxes needed. Then, she tried an Ubuntu LiveCD and
decided to try it as dual boot after only five minutes. It's been years
since she booted Windows, as she has a laptop with XP for the few times
she needs it. For the most part, Ubuntu Just Works.
That is good hear.
Win2k was never meant to be a user OS anyway.
But I would hope that you keep her Ubuntu more up-to-date than you do
your Fedora. The Fedora, F-10, that you are using and the TBird that you
are using, 2.0.0.24, were both EOL years ago. I would suggest that you
should update to take advantage of the many, many bug fixes since then.
But even more import than that would be the security patches that you
have missed out on in both Fedora and TBird. And pretty much everything
else.
--
David
6:09 p.m.
On 10/01/2011 03:53 PM, David wrote:
Curious. Is/was her Windows a recent purchase on a recent computer?
And
what 'did not work'.
She'd been running Win2K on that box for several years. It required the
same almost constant maintenance (Scandisk, defrag, anti-virus and so
on) that all Windows boxes needed. Then, she tried an Ubuntu LiveCD and
decided to try it as dual boot after only five minutes. It's been years
since she booted Windows, as she has a laptop with XP for the few times
she needs it. For the most part, Ubuntu Just Works.
6:02 p.m.
On 1 October 2011 23:28, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
On 10/01/2011 02:58 PM, David wrote:
> As much as*I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop until
> that happens. Until it*just works*. IMO of course.
My older sister runs Ubuntu on her desktop. At least 95% of the time It
Just Works, which is more than you can say for Windows. The other 5% of
the time she asks me, because we share a condo.
Agree with this, this discussion started with a message about
partitioning a drive. If I have to do this in Windows I google it, I
bet most people do if they need to, and even more never even attempt
it. There are different levels of functionality for 'it just works'.
--
imalone
5:53 p.m.
On 10/1/2011 6:28 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 10/01/2011 02:58 PM, David wrote:
> As much as*I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop until
> that happens. Until it*just works*. IMO of course.
My older sister runs Ubuntu on her desktop. At least 95% of the time It
Just Works, which is more than you can say for Windows. The other 5% of
the time she asks me, because we share a condo.
Good for her. And you too. :-)
Curious. Is/was her Windows a recent purchase on a recent computer? And
what 'did not work'.
--
David
5:28 p.m.
On 10/01/2011 02:58 PM, David wrote:
As much as*I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop
until
that happens. Until it*just works*. IMO of course.
My older sister runs Ubuntu on her desktop. At least 95% of the time It
Just Works, which is more than you can say for Windows. The other 5% of
the time she asks me, because we share a condo.
4:58 p.m.
On 10/1/2011 5:39 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 06:12, Marko
Vojinovic<vvmarko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> As a natural consequence, Linux is a priori not designed for
> noobs and newbies who do not want to learn.
I think this is a problem.
When I started using Linux back in 1999 (Caldera OpenLinux before the
SCO fiasco, fwiw(, I expected the user-friendliness to eventually
improve. It did not. But my expectations were not related to myself,
but thinking about friends and family I wanted to convert to Linux.
Back in the OS/2 Warp days, IBM also thought "SYS 3175" was an OK
error message and that end users didn' t need more human-friendly
error messages.
FC
PS: Just including aliases for common Windows commands the users are
expected to find would have helped a lot of newcomers, but actually
the general concensus seems to be "this is Linux, it's not designed to
please Windows users, windows users should learn Linux and how it
works, instead".
This is not meant as a Flame War starter. But...
I agree with you. Grandma and grandpa, mom and dad. Billy and Bobbie can
go to a store and actually buy a computer, in boxes, come home and
connect the pieces and *it just works*. *Everything just works*. Then
along comes a Linux Guru friend and he replaces their OS. And suddenly
things get complicated. And things stop working. Unless they get some
strange file from some man that lives in a cellar in some country with a
really odd name. Or perhaps things work but not quite as well.
As much as *I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop until
that happens. Until it *just works*. IMO of course.
--
David
4:39 p.m.
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 06:12, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
As a natural consequence, Linux is a priori not designed for
noobs and newbies who do not want to learn.
I think this is a problem.
When I started using Linux back in 1999 (Caldera OpenLinux before the
SCO fiasco, fwiw(, I expected the user-friendliness to eventually
improve. It did not. But my expectations were not related to myself,
but thinking about friends and family I wanted to convert to Linux.
Back in the OS/2 Warp days, IBM also thought "SYS 3175" was an OK
error message and that end users didn' t need more human-friendly
error messages.
FC
PS: Just including aliases for common Windows commands the users are
expected to find would have helped a lot of newcomers, but actually
the general concensus seems to be "this is Linux, it's not designed to
please Windows users, windows users should learn Linux and how it
works, instead".
3:36 p.m.
With further use I've found that the hot swap hard drives show up in Dolphin
just fine, even if they aren't mounted manual. It must have been just the
first time after formatting that they don't appear, whereas with fdisk, they
do.
For those that aren't aware a hot swap capable motherboard (and BIOS) + 4
bay (or more) trayless hot swap cage = heaven ! It brings a whole new level
of ease of use when it comes to hard drives.
6:03 p.m.
On Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:33:27 -0600
linux guy wrote:
Today I bought 2 3 TB hard drives to use in my new server.
Did you actually get 2 that both worked? I was looking at
the reviews for 3TB drives on newegg recently and they
make it sound very risky to try 3TB drives (or even
2TB drives).
4:12 a.m.
On Saturday 01 October 2011 03:31:53 Fernando Cassia wrote:
So I eventually realized it´s not really the end-user´s job to know
about the cylinder limits of DOS-style partition tables beforehand.
And that if they fire fdisk on a bigger than 2TB hard drive, a warning
message "hey, look, this tool has a limit on what it can do on the big
hard drive just detected" would go a long way to solve frustration and
waste of time, as experienced by the OP.
If an end-user doesn't know the limitations of DOS partition tables, what
business does he have using fdisk in the first place? If you want to use a low-
level tool for the job, first go educate yourself on how it should be used and
what it can/cannot do. IOW, read the man page.
Linux distros in general were designed and implemented by people who do not
have a problem with learning new stuff and reading documentation (or even
source code). As a natural consequence, Linux is a priori not designed for
noobs and newbies who do not want to learn.
Also at the distribution level, maybe with the exception of Ubuntu. Fedora in
particular has never been a good choice for novice users, but rather for
experienced ones. And an experienced user is *assumed* *to* *know* what is a
man page and that he should probably read it and learn it, when doing
something for the first time.
So I'd say it *is* an end-users job to know about the cylinder limits o DOS-
style prartition tables, if he is to use fdisk on a 3TB drive for the first
time in his life. There are many ways to set up a 3TB drive, some of which
will work with fdisk, while others will not. If the OP has a specific purpose
for his new drive, and wants a specific setup, he also needs to know (or
otherwise get himself informed) about the limitations and tools that
can/cannot do what he wants. Tools like fdisk were not designed to be used by
novice users, and therefore assume some level of knowledge on the users' side.
Over the years of using Linux, I came to expect that GUI apps will usually be
self-explanatory, while CLI apps will have a man page that one should read at
least once before using the app. It is a good habit to check the man page of
every command you are about to type into a console, especially if you are
doing it as root, for system configuration purposes.
Best, :-)
Marko
11:33 p.m.
On Fri, 2011-09-30 at 23:31 -0300, Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 21:57, Craig White
<craigwhite(a)azapple.com> wrote:
> I don't think this exemplifies the problem with FOSS software except for
> maybe indicating that sometimes the information is there for all to see
> but some people don't actually look and rely upon misinformed web pages,
> people, etc.
I used to be like you, always quick to lecture end users with some
technical factoid.
Then I got older, and with age one gets less patience (or less
inclined to waste time trying to work around technical limits in
hardware or software, as one has "been there" many times in the past).
So I eventually realized it´s not really the end-user´s job to know
about the cylinder limits of DOS-style partition tables beforehand.
And that if they fire fdisk on a bigger than 2TB hard drive, a warning
message "hey, look, this tool has a limit on what it can do on the big
hard drive just detected" would go a long way to solve frustration and
waste of time, as experienced by the OP.
Just saying.
----
In the scheme of things:
- drives > 2TB are extremely new
- it's possible if not likely that someone will make partitions smaller
than 2TB
- there actually is a man page describing fdisk and it's limitations and
in fact, the second paragraph of the fdisk man page makes it pretty
clear.
I think that it's unfair to suggest anything about me - I merely
responded to your characterization that you were clued in to exactly
what was wrong with FOSS when in fact the answers were always in the man
page and it made it fairly clear that your assertion was off-base. I
might have thought that you could have simply said that your assertion
was wrong instead. Interestingly, you chose to decry misinformation by
using a misinformed predicate.
Craig
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
9:31 p.m.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 21:57, Craig White <craigwhite(a)azapple.com> wrote:
I don't think this exemplifies the problem with FOSS software
except for
maybe indicating that sometimes the information is there for all to see
but some people don't actually look and rely upon misinformed web pages,
people, etc.
I used to be like you, always quick to lecture end users with some
technical factoid.
Then I got older, and with age one gets less patience (or less
inclined to waste time trying to work around technical limits in
hardware or software, as one has "been there" many times in the past).
So I eventually realized it´s not really the end-user´s job to know
about the cylinder limits of DOS-style partition tables beforehand.
And that if they fire fdisk on a bigger than 2TB hard drive, a warning
message "hey, look, this tool has a limit on what it can do on the big
hard drive just detected" would go a long way to solve frustration and
waste of time, as experienced by the OP.
Just saying.
FC
4:56 p.m.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:12 PM, Lamar Owen <lowen(a)pari.edu> wrote:
Great tip ! Thanks for sharing that.
On Sep 30, 2011, at 2:00 PM, linux guy wrote:
As for the automount gpt issue, as far as I can tell, kernel support for
> gpt is fairly new. I'm sure this issue will be address shortly, if it
> hasn't been already.
I've been using a GPT disk in my laptop for quite a while, F12 at least,
dual-booting with Mac OS X and set up with native GPT support in F12 (am now
at F14).
Yes, but there is probably an entry in fstab for your drive because I bet
you boot from it.
When I say its not mounted, I mean its not mounted automatically like it is
in KDE. I espoused that I thought it was a kernel issue, but it could just
as well be a KDE/hot swap/dbus/udev or whatever they call it these days,
issue.
The partitions on the internal disk show up in Dolphin, and have ever since
F12.
They do on my machine too, once its mounted.
For fdisk-like usage but for GPT grab gdisk.
10:33 a.m.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:18 AM, linux guy <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Speaking of which, what is a good way to compare the files in two
directories (recursively, of course) to ensure that they are exactly the
same ?
Something like diff for files ?
As opposed to diff for non files? :) I think you mean non text files?
Diff will operate on binary files, but it will only say if it differs
instead of outputting diff text.
Just do a recursive diff, the -q will keep it quiet on text files as
well and only say that it differs.
diff -qr <dir1> <dir2>
If there's any output then somethings not the same.
Richard
1:12 p.m.
On Sep 30, 2011, at 2:00 PM, linux guy wrote:
As for the automount gpt issue, as far as I can tell, kernel support
for gpt is fairly new. I'm sure this issue will be address shortly,
if it hasn't been already.
I've been using a GPT disk in my laptop for quite a while, F12 at
least, dual-booting with Mac OS X and set up with native GPT support
in F12 (am now at F14).
The partitions on the internal disk show up in Dolphin, and have ever
since F12.
For fdisk-like usage but for GPT grab gdisk.
1:12 p.m.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 14:54, linux guy <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Lets be clear here. There isn't really a bug in fdisk.
If it doesn't want the user about this, I consider it a bug. lack of
documentation and human-readable feedback is a bug. :)
Like you say, firing fdisk on a >2TB disk should give users SOME
WARNING about it not being able to do everything users otherwise
expect it to do. :)
And when I sad "file a bug" I meant "file a report" on Bugzilla or
whatever is used for bug tracking and RFEs by the particular project /
component.
Best regards,
FC
12:44 p.m.
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 14:25, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
And, there'd be more progress if people filed bug reports instead of
just ranting that somebody else shou
I was just making an observation, trying to influence people who DO
experience problems to actually FILE BUGS rather than just coming up
with "fix recipes" and sharing the work-around recipes.
Who better to file a bug than someone who experienced it?.
FC
1:05 p.m.
On 09/30/2011 10:57 AM, linux guy wrote:
I file my fair share of bugs. Generally I like to post issues to
discussion groups (mailing lists) to be sure there is indeed an issue
and that I am not overlooking something.
Lets see where this discussion goes and then I/we can determine if it
warrants a bugzilla entry.
When I was working on the issue I never once thought that I was dealing
with a bug. Could fdisk and (g)parted be made better ? Yes. Are they
buggy ? No.
Thus answering my post about filing a feature request before I wrote it.
Please disregard that post as redundant.
1 p.m.
As for the automount gpt issue, as far as I can tell, kernel support for gpt
is fairly new. I'm sure this issue will be address shortly, if it hasn't
been already.
12:57 p.m.
I file my fair share of bugs. Generally I like to post issues to discussion
groups (mailing lists) to be sure there is indeed an issue and that I am not
overlooking something.
Lets see where this discussion goes and then I/we can determine if it
warrants a bugzilla entry.
When I was working on the issue I never once thought that I was dealing with
a bug. Could fdisk and (g)parted be made better ? Yes. Are they buggy ?
No.
12:54 p.m.
Lets be clear here. There isn't really a bug in fdisk. It just doesn't
handle any partition table types other than MSDOS. And MSDOS type partition
tables have the 2 TB limitation, not fdisk.
I don't blame developers for not updating fdisk. I think its an inferior
tool to parted (and gparted). For instance, in addition to handling on
MSDOS type partition tables, it also allows users to move and resize
partitions, non destructively.
One of the strengths of FOSS is that there is a variety of tools to work
with and they generally support the latest available hardware, ie > 2TB hard
drives in this case. To say nothing of USB 3.0 and a whole host of other
things, like good RAID, etc.
And just to be clear on something else, there was documentation on the 2TB
fdisk limitation, but I had to glean info from several sources to complete
my mission. Having figured everything out, I merely wrote up the post in
order to share what I learned and to compile everything needed for the task
in one source.
Now... could fdisk (and gparted) be improved ? Absolutely. Here is how:
a) fdisk should have a warning anytime it is asked to work on a disk > 2TB.
There are no warnings that it limits the size of > 2TB devices until the
final outcome, which for me was running df after mkfs on the partition. Had
I not been awake, I probably would have filled the drive before I realized
that only the first 2 TB was being used.
b) parted and gparted should warn users who select MSDOS type partition
tables for devices > 2 TB. It should also warn users if an MSDOS type
partition table has been used for devices > 2 TB, ie if someone partitioned
a drive using fdisk.
c) unless parted (and gparted) is started with the optimize parameter, you
may get a warning that the disk has not been set up efficiently, with no
clue as to why or how to fix it. I think end users need more information
than the warning.
d) If one runs parted (and gparted) on a > 3TB with an MSDOS style partition
table, one gets an obscure error message about having too many sectors.
Again I think end users need more information than that error message.
12:25 p.m.
On 09/30/2011 08:32 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
a. A BUG REPORT ON FDISK is entered, so that:
* It works correctly on drives bigger than 2TB, or
* (interim solution) it displays a user-friendly message telling the user
that for big drives as (the current drive size) gparted is the right way to
partition to avoid limitations in the FDISK software.
b. FILE A BUG on the automount routines, it should automount such
drive just like those partitioned with FDISK.
And, there'd be more progress if people filed bug reports instead of
just ranting that somebody else should.
11:07 a.m.
On 30 September 2011 16:32, Fernando Cassia <fcassia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 19:33, linux guy
<linuxguy123(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> It turns out that the whole process can be done from within gparted, if you
> know what you are doing.
This exemplifies the problem with FOSS software and the "here's the
recipe on how to fix it" culture, . Don't get me wrong, I'm not
throwing blame around, I just want to say that:
1. Instead of posting "recipes" on how to fix limitations of the
software, it'd be MUCH MORE helpful to FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS
with the software, so that:
a. A BUG REPORT ON FDISK is entered, so that:
* It works correctly on drives bigger than 2TB, or
* (interim solution) it displays a user-friendly message telling the user
that for big drives as (the current drive size) gparted is the right way to
partition to avoid limitations in the FDISK software.
b. FILE A BUG on the automount routines, it should automount such
drive just like those partitioned with FDISK.
The two aren't mutually exclusive, fixing the problem and all corner
cases thoroughly may take a while, so being able to rapidly share a
solution which works is helpful. Otherwise we're talking about people
waiting for fdisk to be fixed and a new release rolled out (otherwise
applying a patch and building it yourself is not too much different
from following a recipe for operation).
--
imalone
10:32 a.m.
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 19:33, linux guy <linuxguy123(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It turns out that the whole process can be done from within gparted,
if you
know what you are doing.
This exemplifies the problem with FOSS software and the "here's the
recipe on how to fix it" culture, . Don't get me wrong, I'm not
throwing blame around, I just want to say that:
1. Instead of posting "recipes" on how to fix limitations of the
software, it'd be MUCH MORE helpful to FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS
with the software, so that:
a. A BUG REPORT ON FDISK is entered, so that:
* It works correctly on drives bigger than 2TB, or
* (interim solution) it displays a user-friendly message telling the user
that for big drives as (the current drive size) gparted is the right way to
partition to avoid limitations in the FDISK software.
b. FILE A BUG on the automount routines, it should automount such
drive just like those partitioned with FDISK.
FC
10:18 a.m.
Speaking of which, what is a good way to compare the files in two
directories (recursively, of course) to ensure that they are exactly the
same ?
Something like diff for files ?
Thanks
11:21 p.m.
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Tom Horsley <horsley1953(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:33:27 -0600
linux guy wrote:
> Today I bought 2 3 TB hard drives to use in my new server.
Did you actually get 2 that both worked? I was looking at
the reviews for 3TB drives on newegg recently and they
make it sound very risky to try 3TB drives (or even
2TB drives).
They both appear to work just fine. They are Hitachi Deskstar 5400 RPM 3TB
drives. About 2.7 TB of usable storage each after formatting.
8:21 p.m.
On 10/1/2011 7:55 PM, Craig White wrote:
On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 19:32 -0400, David wrote:
> Fedora 'out of the box' works for me too. But then I don't use laptops
> and they seem to be a major source of problem(s).
----
laptops often have short run, proprietary hardware that if no one
provides ample feedback to developers, may very well have some
unintended features (nice way of saying bugs).
Agree.
----
> From what I read on
> various lists. And I avoid Dell like a contagious infection (ducks under
> desk) because I see many with problems.
----
I don't have a problem with Dell but everyone is free to choose to buy
whatever suits them. Dell& HP have been strong supporters of Dell and
for a few years, Dell's point man on Linux was a member of the Fedora
board.
I have never owned a Dell. I do know two people that have them. On came
with, and still uses Vista. The other came with and still uses Win 7.
Both work just fine.
----
> Those were the 'users' I was referring to above. Now when Linux will
> really, really do stuff, like Windows games for example, then we just
> might get the 'average person' to switch to Linux. Tux Racer is *not* a
> real game BTW. :-)
----
I'm sort of out of touch on games myself but I think what you are
specifically referring to are the games which drive high end hardware
sales (overclock motherboards, high end video cards, etc.) and the open
source platform isn't especially well suited for that environment at
this point. I'm not sure that I would suggest that this type of user is
actually the 'average person' as you describe it but certainly a
significant percentage of the user base.
The games that I am thinking of are the games that young people and
children play. And some of us olde guys like too. :-) The Call of Duty
series. The Elder Scrolls series. The Half-Life series. The Fallout
series. There are too many to name.
I think that if you really wanted to examine market segmentation in
a
reasonably meaningful way, you would be looking at business use and not
just home use. You would consider that many large corporations do indeed
use Linux as it clearly drives down the CTO for each desktop unit
represented whereas the Macintosh is clearly the worst in this category.
Perhaps the most available market segment is the small business category
and that segment has been dominated by 'must have' software such as
Quickbooks but as more software moves to the cloud and becomes SAAS,
then the desktop OS becomes less significant - at least in terms of
having specific needs drive specific choices. The home user market is
clearly segmenting at this point with the tablets stealing much of the
home laptop and desktop sales.
The company that I work for has it's own server and the software that I
use every day, provided by them, runs on Windows. None of it has a Linux
clone and I seriously doubt that any of it ever will. And none of it
will run on WINE (why would anyone actually try to do that?) or in any
emulator (again why even try?) so I use what works.
If you have clients that can run a Linux system and their needs are
taken care of by Linux software good for them and good for you.
But I live in the real world. More people use Mac computers and software
than use Linux and I only actually know one person that uses a Mac. And
it is a new one and he runs Windows on it. And, unfortunately perhaps,
Linux is still not really ready for that world. The real one.
--
David
4555
days inactive
4586
days old
45 comments
15 participants
participants (15)
-
Bruno Wolff III -
Craig White -
Dan Thurman -
David -
Fernando Cassia -
Ian Malone -
Jitesh Shah -
Joe Zeff -
John Aldrich -
Lamar Owen -
linux guy -
Marko Vojinovic -
Michael Schwendt -
Richard Shaw -
Tom Horsley