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 >
