Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Jeff Vian]

On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 19:11 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 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
> 
OK

> >
> >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.
> 
And there is _not_ something wrong with that?
Try a different card or remove it entirely to see if there are any
differences.
Try different hardware.  You are the only one I have seen on this list
that has your type problems, and it seems it is only the one machine.
Just maybe it is _not_ the software.

> new antec 430 watt psu a month ago.

OK

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


>From personal experience I can say that even the least likely things are
suspect until ruled out.

I had one machine that had one hard drive on the primary controller and
one cdrom on the secondary controller.  Intermittently I would get
errors logged on the hard drive.
Replaced the hard drive and symptoms continued, swapped  controllers and
the errors followed the hard drive. Swapped cables with no change.
Finally, on a whim I replaced the cdrom.  Problems went away.  No
problem had ever been logged on the CDROM, and it was on a different
controller.

Moral of the story is:  dig deeper.
One of your complaints was memory, one was lack of space, one was
problems at the time of swapping install CDs, others I don't remember.  

That is why I suggested hardware.  Problems are not reproducible.  You
seem to have been unable to point to a specific failure point or time
that is consistent. A PCI card that identifies itself as ISA seems
strange, but it may be anything on or in the motherboard since the
symptom moves and it seems certain conditions trigger it but others
don't.