Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 24 January 2005 18:50, Jeff Vian wrote:
>On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 18:28 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Monday 24 January 2005 17:28, Jeff Vian wrote:
>> >On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 15:31 -0600, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 01:00:04PM -0500, William Hooper wrote:
>> >> > Timothy Murphy said:
>> >> > > Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
>> >> > >> Fdisk has never been removed. It has always been availible
>> >> > >> for people who want more control over their partitioning
>> >> > >> than Disk Druid provides.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > What you are saying is that there is a secret code known to
>> >> > > experts for doing this.
>> >> >
>> >> > Again, the "secret code" is the standard keystroke for
>> >> > changing virtual terminals.
>> >> >
>> >> > [snip]
>> >> >
>> >> > > If you tell them
>> >> > > that something is dangerous you should assume that they
>> >> > > have heard you, and will either take care or else avoid
>> >> > > that method altogether.
>> >> >
>> >> > Unfortunately this isn't the case.  As a real-world example:
>> >> > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2003-July/ms
>> >> >g00 574.html
>> >> >
>> >> > > Incidentally, to the many people who have told me
>> >> > > I should have used Ctr-Alt-F2 rather than Alt-F2,
>> >> > > I actually explained at one point that I was installing in
>> >> > > text mode, as the X that comes with Fedora does not run
>> >> > > properly on my Sony Picturebook (C1VFK).
>> >> > > But Alt-F2 did not work for me either.
>> >> >
>> >> > WORKSFORME.  Perhaps your hardware has issues changing
>> >> > virtual terminals?
>> >>
>> >> Ok. if you are going from X to an alternate terminal you have
>> >> to type ALT- CTL- Fx . To back to X or another terminal then
>> >> ALT - Fx is enough. F7 usually represents the X terminal. In a
>> >> text install F1 and F2 will surfice. I just did this a week ago
>> >> and I think F2 will take you out of the text install and F1
>> >> take you back to the install. At worst I have the F1 and F2
>> >> reversed. But that certainly works.
>> >> -------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >Exactly my point.
>> >
>> >It seems Gene and others would like fdisk as one of the options
>> > during the install instead of *forcing* all those who have no
>> > clue about getting to a shell (Shall we say newbies) to use only
>> > the one tool someone has deemed safe (DD) or allowing it to
>> > autopartition. Both of which choose their own way of organizing
>> > the partitons, and it seems to me that autopartitioning uses LVM
>> > (in addition to destroying existing partitions), which may not
>> > be ideal for some.
>> >
>> >What I do not understand is why choices are being removed from
>> > menus and hidden.  I thought this was about freedom to choose,
>> > as well as making it attractive and easy for new users.
>>
>> Very well said, Jeff.  And to illustrate a similar problem, I've
>> made 5 (unsuccessfull) passes at installing BDI-Live-RC46 again
>> today, on a seperate hard drive in this same machine, which uses
>> cfdisk as its partitioning tool.  Its a little bit better than DD
>> in my opinion, but its still flakey.  In 5 installs, only one run
>> would allow me to set /dev/hda1 as the /boot partition, the other
>> 4 refused to show me anything in the primary partition camp,
>> starting at /dev/hda5 in its pulldown choices.  It looks as if one
>> could type his answer into the box as the cursor can be placed
>> there, but if focused on the text bos, it appears the keyboard is
>> disabled.  At any rate, going after it with your favorite bug
>> swatter would seem to be a pretty good idea, particularly if it
>> can be made a bit more intuitive to run.
>>
>> The lack of success is the installer script is not apparently
>> setting its paths correctly, so when it comes time to setup the
>> root and user, all of those useradd/groupadd/chpasswd etc tools
>> aren't being found, so the passwd and group files are not being
>> updated.  So on the reboot to actually run it, no passwords are
>> recognized and you are locked out from logging in forever.  And it
>> seems rather self-explanatory that you cannot get a great amount
>> of work out of a machine you cannot run.
>
>Although I support you on the request for fdisk to be back in the
>installer as an option, the rest of your problems has me stumped.
>
>I have never had the sort of problem you report with any hardware
>combination I have used.  That leads me to believe you may have
>something that is actually hardware related that pops up its ugly
> head during the install and hides otherwise.
>
>Some of the items you have related seem possibly power, memory or MB
>related.
>
>1. Have you run memtest86 on this machine - deepest and most extreme
>test it has - for at least 24 hours?

yes, flawless in 36 hours

>
>2. Have you done an identical install on different hardware?  Just
> to rule out the intermittent or conditional hardware issue?

no

the only unusual item in that box is a pci card that thinks its an isa 
card.

>3. What are you using as a power supply?  I know that some power
>supplies work perfectly *except* in some cases.  I had one machine
> that gave me intermittent hangs/reboots with nothing to indicate
> the reason. I finally gave in and tried a different power supply
> and the problem disappeared.  Power supplies that are marginal on
> the power/voltages can give weird results in the fringe cases. 
> Athalon CPUs are known to be especially sensitive to that.

new antec 430 watt psu a month ago.

>Hope this gives you some things to try and consider.
>Jeff

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.