Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[James McKenzie]

Jeff Vian wrote:
> 
> 
> So let me get this straight,  You have at least 6 psrtitons already
> defined and you are basically recreating partitions where others already
> were.  It is no wonder they did not get moved by the capriciousness of
> DD.  It had to fit them around the other pre-existing partitons.

Correct, I thought the problem was with new partitions being placed and 
changed.  I guess I was mistaken that this problem affected systems in 
that partitions where being mislabeled and that they were being 
misconfigured.  Maybe I'm lucky and it did not mess up my system.  And I 
did not use fdisk to setup my system before I deleted and changed my 
partitions.  I guess that I will have to dig out my RH9 "spare" disk and 
blow it away to a clean disk.

Again, I guess that I'm blessed and either my twenty years of experience 
sets me aside, or I did not do what caused the error.  Again, I can dig 
out the drive and blow it away and reinstall FC3 using DD's 'power'. 
Maybe, I'll use autoconfigure to see what happens.
> 
>>>On an unpartitioned disk it chooses where the partition goes.  If there
>>>are more than one disk it by default chooses both (or all) disks as the
>>>possible targets.  If you create say 5 partitons and you build them in
>>>the order you want them placed IT chooses the order (and drive) it feels
>>>is best for creating them.  So what you thought was hda2 may actually
>>>become hdb3, etc. 
>>>
>>
>>This may be desirable.  However, it can and does become frustrating.
>>
> 
> I did not reply to your post, James, I replied to Emmanuel's.
> And yes it is very frustrating to have things moved.  I as yet see no
> benefit from having the tool decide what I want.
> 
It appears that you did reply to my post.  However, for a new user of 
any UNIX, including LINUX, setting up a system can prove very 
frustrating.  I agree that us power-users should have access to the 
tools they are familiar with and know how to use.  And, as I pointed 
out, there is.  Boot your system using linux text.  I think that you can 
get to fdisk as it is on CD 1.  But I agree that new users could get 
confused coming from the Windows world on how UNIX fdisk works and could 
(in theory) end up seriously messing up their hard drive.  DD gives them 
a graphical view of their drive.  And I am going to look at the 
autoconfigure feature of DD. It may take some time to do this.  I do 
have to sleep sometime....

And I don't doubt that some folks have had problems with DD.  I've seen 
problems that affect some folks and others are wondering what is 
happening.  In this case, I feel that I am in the former group and 
yourself and others on the list are in the former.  That is why I want 
to run an install on a clean disk rather than do an installation on a 
disk where I have to keep data from prior installs.

-- 
James McKenzie