At 17:43:20 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Stan Goodman wrote:

At 16:19:41 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, jdd wrote:

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Stan Goodman a écrit :

That must be a typo; the boot manager is not the boot loader.

of course it is. what do manage the boot if not the boot loader? certainly not the partition table

In all respect, the function of the Boot Manager is to choose among the various systems on the machine. For example, a developer may have several Linux distros on his machine for debugging purposes; a Windows addict may have XP and a Linux; for some time after I switched to Linux, I kept OS/2 for purposes of reference. The Boot Manager is not Grub, which is the Boot Loader; if and when I ever get this thing straightened out, I will put Grub in /boot, which will be in the / partigion. Putting it in the Boot Manager partition would defeat the purpose of multiple operating systems.

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I'm sorry too. What else would you like to see?

read below what I wrote in the last mail:

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what is the full size of your drive? you have to write down the starting/ending sector of each partition.

run the openSUSE dvd, rescue system and type fdisk -l

copy the result here

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System /dev/sda1 * 1 1 8001 a OS/2 Boot Manager /dev/sda2 2 9479 76132035 5 Extended /dev/sda5 2 271 2168743 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 272 4238 31684896 83 Linux /dev/sda7 4239 9479 42098301 83 Linux

-- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel

-- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

At 19:16:41 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Per Jessen wrote:

Stan Goodman wrote:

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Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System /dev/sda1 * 1 1 8001 a OS/2 Boot Manager /dev/sda2 2 9479 76132035 5 Extended /dev/sda5 2 271 2168743 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 272 4238 31684896 83 Linux /dev/sda7 4239 9479 42098301 83 Linux

This looks fine - when you look at openSUSEs partitioning suggestion, does /dev/sda4 go beyond the last cylinder at 9479?

I hesitat to even look to find out. How can sda4 be even close to the last cylinder, when sda5, 6, and 7 are near the beginning. As I just told jdd, I'm going to choose to install on sda6 and sda7. If it works, I will be very relieved. If it doesn't, the machine is going back to the Dell importer. It probably ought to go back anyway, unless they can supply a debugged BIOS. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

At 22:35:25 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/10/02 19:59 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

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I hesitat to even look to find out. How can sda4 be even close to the last cylinder, when sda5, 6, and 7 are near the beginning.

jdd answered this, but as his answer wasn't clear to me, I think it likely that it wasn't clear to you. Thus, this reply.

I did understand it (AFTER I read his note) but it escaped me previously.

To Linux fdisk, the partitions specified in the MBR table are always 1-4. The names 1-4 are applied to physical partitions in the order that they appear in the table, which isn't necessarily the same order that they appear on disk. After partitioning and repartitioning and repartitioning yet again, it's easily possible for the table entries to bear no relationship whatsoever to physical disk positions.

When you partitioned with DFSee, you created:

sda1 IBM BM (sda2 extended) sda5 swap sda6 / sda7 /home

These were contiguous on disk, even though sda2, sda3 & sda4 didn't appear to exist. What did exist was freespace beyond sda7. In the MBR table, the BM primary occupied the first table entry. In the second table entry was the first link in the extended chain (sda2). The 3rd & 4th table positions were unoccupied.

The oS installer proposed a scheme in which two primary partitions would be created in the freespace beyond sda7. The only primary entries available were 3 & 4, so that's what the two new partitions would become, even though at the physical opposite end of the disk from BM and with 3 logicals in between. It could have made them logicals instead, and been named sda8 & sda9. Either way, as sda3/4 or sda8/9, they would have occupied the same physical space.

The proposal would have created this result: sda1 IBM BM (sda2 extended) sda5 swap sda6 (/, but unknown to automatic partitioner) sda7 (/home, but unknown to automatic partitioner) sda3 / sda4 /home

Had you with DFSee created the installer-proposed layout in advance, the names probably would have come out differently. If you had done:

BM primary for Linux at end of disk (proposed /) primary for Linux at end of freespace (proposed /home) (extended) logical at start of freespace (swap) logical at start of freespace (to the installer, unknown) logical at start of freespace (to the installer, unknown)

the resulting names would have been:

sda1 BM sda2 proposed /home sda3 proposed / sda4 extended sda5 swap sda6 unknown to the installer sda7 unknown to the installer

This is because DFSee would have used the free table slots as it came to them, 1-4 in order. The end result is still primary partitions on both ends of the extended, but instead of the extended being named sda2 it gets the name sda4, as it got the last available MBR table slot.

To really confuse things in the interest of future clarity, you could use DFSee to very quickly rearrange (sort) the table, changing it from:

sda1 IBM BM (sda2 extended) sda5 swap sda6 (/, but unknown to automatic partitioner) sda7 (/home, but unknown to automatic partitioner) sda3 / sda4 /home

to:

sda1 IBM BM sda2 / sda3 /home (sda4 extended) sda5 swap sda6 (/, but unknown to automatic partitioner) sda7 (/home, but unknown to automatic partitioner)

The partitions themselves, and thus their positions on disk, would not be touched.

When you partition in advance, you are, to the installation program, an "expert". Thus to use the partitions you created in advance as you wish, you must choose the advanced/expert mode of partitioning during installation. In advanced partitioning, after you have fully partitioned in advance, you only choose mount points, mount options, and boot loader location; you don't create or delete partitions, or let the installer guess what you would like it to do. -- " A patriot without religion . . . is as great a paradox, as an honest man without the fear of God. . . . 2nd U.S. President, John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

-- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2009-10-03 at 12:54 +0200, Stan Goodman wrote:

At 22:35:25 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Felix Miata <> wrote:

I neglected to answer your question about why I wrote of BIOS problem when I was in DFSee.

The problem there was in keys producing the wrong characters. I think it is doubtful that DFSee doesn't have its own character set and independent editing facility; writing in DFSee doesn't normally produce "/" from the "0" key. I assume that those things have to be coming from the BIOS. I should have said that.

I understand that dfsee uses its own boot cd? Then it is up to that cd operating system to map the keyboard, not the bios. If you get incorrect keys, it is the fault of that CD, a bug. Things get more complicated with portables, because they usually have cramped keyboards with keys having several uses. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkrHsbAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9VzIQCfUM5c/2IkuaH6+iB55KT37SPQ Bu0AnjGQKa4ueDjmGiPxx6bbAxr8zsbC =8GCo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday, 2009-10-02 at 19:59 +0200, Stan Goodman wrote:

As I just told jdd, I'm going to choose to install on sda6 and sda7. If it works, I will be very relieved. If it doesn't, the machine is going back to the Dell importer.

You can simply forget dfsee, boot the install disk, use the partitioner there to erase the partition table and create a brand new table, and proceed with the install. I don't see why you need dfsee at all, unless you inted to instal several operating systems. Nor the need of the os2 boot manager on its own primary. But of course, if you use dfsee or any other partitioning tool, then in the installer partitioner you do have to use the expert mode and ignore completely its initial proposal. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkrHLGQACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UeKgCeNLw3bHqYUdPgB/sLapG1TjGE aa0AniQd1SkUx5oz7pB2gfDf8FyXZybZ =Cq8V -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org