Draft 'install alongside Windows' test case

Al Dunsmuir al.dunsmuir at sympatico.ca
Thu Sep 1 09:49:19 UTC 2011


On Wednesday, August 31, 2011, 10:27:27 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-08-31 at 20:45 -0400, Al Dunsmuir wrote:
>> On Wednesday, August 31, 2011, 8:08:19 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
>> > Hey, folks. I just threw together a quick draft of an 'install alongside
>> > Windows' test case - we have this as a final criterion, but no test case
>> > for it as of yet. Here's the draft:
>> 
>> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Adamwill/Draft_QA_Testcase_install_alongside_Windows
>> 
>> > any comments, questions, suggestions welcome! thanks.
>> 
>> I  think that you need to be specific as to what you mean by "Windows"
>> - especially given the different behaviours with GPT and MBR.

> Well, no version of Windows yet sets up a GPT disk label, and anaconda
> is supposed to leave existing MSDOS disk labels around.

True,  but  anaconda  does  let one create additional empty partitions
that  could  be  used to install Windows after Fedora (creating a dual
boot  system  in the opposite order).

Where  a  Windows variant does support GPT, it would be useful to know
if  it  tolerates  installing in a partition created during the Fedora
install.

>> There need to be tests (with release blocking on fails for):
>> * XP 32-bit (both FAT and NTFS)
>> * Vista (32 & 64-bit)
>> * Windows 7 (32  &  64-bit)
>> * Windows 8 preview (32 & 64-bit)

> Remember, the tests go into a matrix which has both 32-bit and 64-bit
> columns, so there's no need to have different tests.

I'm not talking Fedora 32-bit vs 64-bit, I'm talking Windows 32 vs 64.
Making  sure  one  records  the  Windows  variant separately minimizes
confusion,  and  allows  tests  by  multiple  reporters  to  be merged
together reasonably.

> I'm not sure it's realistic to list separate test cases for every
> version of Windows known to man; I left it generic on purpose so that
> people can test with whatever Windows they happen to own. The version of
> Windows that's present shouldn't ever make an awful lot of difference,
> anyway, since Fedora doesn't have to *do* anything with it besides
> identify it. Ditto FAT vs. NTFS: we're intentionally *not* covering
> partition resizing here, as it's not supported. About the only issue
> would be ensuring os-prober can recognize all Windows variants.

The  grub  utility  that  does  probing  needs  to be tested against a
variety  of Windows variants.  Accurately recording which variant that
was tested against was the point of my post.

Otherwise  your test might as well be comprised of tests against empty
FAT and NTFS partitions.

>> I  would  suggest  that  you  also  want to test against a DOS variant
>> (especially FreeDOS since it is FOS).

> This isn't in the scope of the release criteria, and I don't think it
> really needs to be. We're concerned with the common case of 'I want to
> install Fedora alongside Windows'. Installing alongside DOS is pretty
> corner case-y these days.

FreeDOS  documents  grub  booting. Again, the grub _probing_ should do
the  right  thing, or at least do no harm.

As  noted,  very much a corner case but if it breaks there should be a
note somewhere that Google could spider.

I've  got  to  install  FreeDOS  at some point to test zip/unzip built
under  Linux,  but  I'm  not  likely  going  to  be  ready  in time to
contribute to the F16 beta test results.







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