How to help? was Re: Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18

David Jansen jansen at strw.leidenuniv.nl
Mon May 17 16:40:52 UTC 2004


On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 12:53:51PM -0300, Pedro Fernandes Macedo wrote:
> Law Horne wrote:
> 
> >Ok I posted this A little while ago. But since everyone was still
> >arguing about this issue no one seem to notice. So I do not know if it
> >helps or not. SO I'M REPOSTING it. 
> >
> > 
> >
> thx , but I'm looking for ways to gather data to be used to find the 
> reasons of this problem so it can be added to the bug report and fixed...
> 
> --
> Pedro Macedo
> 

I'm not at all an expert on any of the items related to this bug (grub,
anaconda, disk druid, bios, ...) but I think we can narrow down the
problem like this:
- if it were just a grub problem, it would also happen on upgrades
  whereas so far it has been reported to happen on fresh FC2T? installs
  only
- the bios-workarounds that some have posted seem to suggest there is 
  something wrong in the partition table. There was also a report of
  errors from partition magic, which seems to point in the same
  direction.
  Now, does grub modify the partition table? I don't know, I would think 
  it only touches the boot record and its own configuration files.
  What does anaconda/disk druid do when you don't change the partitions 
  on a new install (e.g. wipe out your existing linux partitions)? 
  Does it then still rewrite the partition table? 
- if I remember correctly, anaconda has an option to either modify the
  existing boot loader or reinstall grub. Is the bug influenced in any
  way by this choice?
  If it were a grub issue on fresh installs, i would expect it to pop up
  also on upgrades when the choice is made to reinstall grub.
- all the bug reports mention windows XP as the other OS. Would it be
  useful to test this with Windows 2000 or 2003? 
  What happens with dual-boot configurations with multiple Linux
  distributions, or with *BSD as the other OS?

I'd be glad to add a spare disk to my test system and run a few of these
scenarios (probably tomorrow once I have FC2, no use testing FC2T3 now I
guess) but since full installs take quite some time, it might be useful
to get some answers, eg if someone already encountered the bug with
Win2000 there is no need for me to spend time on that test.

David Jansen





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