Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Jeff Vian]

On Tue, 2005-01-25 at 08:30 -0500, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> > On Monday 24 January 2005 21:55, Jeff Vian wrote:
> >> However, that still does not justify making it more difficult for
> >> those who _do_ have a clue.
> >
> > And thats my point precisely.  The current way around in DD means it
> > still has a final say-so, because you cannot proceed without its
> > apparent writes to the bootblocks.  If I have setup what I want in
> > fdisk, then there needs to be some method thats obvious, for one to
> > get out of DD without its touching the drive, and let anaconda
> > proceed to format what it can see by doing its own read of the
> > bootblocks for the partition table AS IT EXISTS at that point in
> > time.  At that point, if it appears that a mke2fs has already been
> > done at some point, either now or maybe 5 years ago, anaconda needs
> > to ask if the data on this partition is to be wiped.  Even Joe
> > Sixpack ought to be able to grab a pencil and paper and keep track of
> > that.  Particularly if he was prompted to do so by anaconda "just for
> > future record keeping" if nothing else.
> 
> But if you set the partitions in fdisk, select "partition manually" and 
> don't make any changes to the partition layout, DD doesn't do anything to 
> the partition table.
> 
> The reason you can't escape going through DD in this case is that DD is 
> where you associate partitions with filesystems.  fdisk can't do that, 
> because fdisk knows nothing about filesystems or labels (except for the 
> type code).  So what you need to do is:
> 
> (1) Lay your disk out with fdisk. (Use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to it from the 
> screen where you select auto or manual partition.)
> 
> (2) Go to DD by choosing manual partition.  Edit each partition.  In the 
> edit window, associate the partition with the appropriate filesystem.  If 
> the partition already contains a recognizable system, the edit window 
> tells you its label.  For the installation partitions, select "format".
> 
> (3) Proceed to the next screen.  As you haven't changed the partition 
> layout, DD will not secretly change the partition layout either.  It will 
> format filesystems that you specify, and it will warn you if you fail to 
> specify that a partition it needs should be formatted.  I think it will 
> warn you if you fail to create a partition it needs (e.g., swap).  I don't 
> know what it does if you attempt to use a logical partition for /boot.
> 
> It might be handy for some users if DD read the labels on existing 
> filesystems and proposed an association, but then again, for other users, 
> it might not.
> 

DD does do that.  If the partition was previously installed and labeled
as /boot it tells you that.
I use that feature to be sure I am putting things where I want when I do
a reinstall.  It also helps to determine what to format or not.

> --
>  		Matthew Saltzman
> 
> Clemson University Math Sciences
> mjs AT clemson DOT edu
> http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
>