Stan Goodman wrote:

Regarding the list of Available Storage, I have added up the sizes of the real and fictitious partitions, and find that the total is 305.49GB. The HD that came with the machine is nominally 250GB; Even the Available Storage list says it is 232.89GB, so this is a real break through in cheap ways to get extra storage.

Assuming you've got your numbers right, I would also call it a bug in the partitioner. /Per -- Per Jessen, Zürich (16.0°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Stan Goodman wrote:

At 17:35:10 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Per Jessen wrote:

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Stan Goodman wrote:

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Regarding the list of Available Storage, I have added up the sizes of the real and fictitious partitions, and find that the total is 305.49GB. The HD that came with the machine is nominally 250GB; Even the Available Storage list says it is 232.89GB, so this is a real break through in cheap ways to get extra storage.

Assuming you've got your numbers right, I would also call it a bug in the partitioner.

Nice to be vindicated. Also DFSee.

Hold your horses just two seconds - see jdds posting about the size of your extended partition. I think he's found the 16Gb you were "missing". /Per -- Per Jessen, Zürich (14.4°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

At 20:12:38 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/10/02 18:22 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

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This machine has yet another problem, by the way. When I set up the partitions and wanted to set sizes for them, the "0" key produced "?" instead, so I let sizes like e.g. 41111. When I wanted to set names for them, many of the alphabetical keys produced numbers instead. The BIOS is screwed up.

Can you plug a USB keyboard into your new laptop? If you can, there may be a workaround. On a US 101+ key PS/2 keyboard on a DOS boot or a Linux tty[1-6] one can type Alt-(keypad)048 to put a 0 on the screen. I just tested that this works on tty2 in 11.0 running dfsee for Linux. I haven't tried DFSDOS, but it should work there as well, since I know it works from DOS command prompt. It does not work in Konsole, so I suppose it won't work in any Xorg's DTE.

My immediate workaround was to devise names that I was able to type. My longer term workaround will be to stay out of the BIOS as much as possible. Right now is that the installation is in its final throes, I mean stages (it is doing its reboot), after a nerve-racking couple of hours trying to manage the erratic touch pad which is not worth the powder to blow it to hell. Now it has given me its first error message: "No network running". The network IS running, which really means that the card is not enabled. I have to find out how to enable it; others on the 'Net have reported that it is a mystery. I will also have the touch pad disconnected physicall -- I'm told there is no other way. I can't remember why I bought a Dell. --

" 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

At 22:51:34 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/10/02 22:02 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

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Felix Miata wrote:

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Can you plug a USB keyboard into your new laptop? If you can, there may be a workaround. On a US 101+ key PS/2 keyboard on a DOS boot or a Linux tty[1-6] one can type Alt-(keypad)048 to put a 0 on the screen. I just tested that this works on tty2 in 11.0 running dfsee for Linux. I haven't tried DFSDOS, but it should work there as well, since I know it works from DOS command prompt. It does not work in Konsole, so I suppose it won't work in any Xorg's DTE.

My immediate workaround was to devise names that I was able to type. My longer term workaround will be to stay out of the BIOS as much as possible.

I thought the no 0 problem was while trying to partition. Where in the BIOS were you supposed to type a 0?

I wanted to enter sizes, e.g. 20000 bytes. So I wrote 21111. It anyway sets the size according to where the cylinder boundaries are.

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Right now is that the installation is in its final throes, I mean stages (it is doing its reboot), after a nerve-racking couple of hours trying to manage the erratic touch pad which is not worth the powder to blow it to hell.

Now it has given me its first error message: "No network running". The network IS running, which really means that the card is not enabled. I have to find out how to enable it; others on the 'Net have reported that it is a mystery. I will also have the touch pad disconnected physicall -- I'm told there is no other way.

If you can't get network up, please start a new thread for getting help if Google can't find you an answer. Be sure to include the output of lspci -v applicable to your network hardware if you have to ask.

Right.

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I can't remember why I bought a Dell.

Better than average longevity and support is why I recommend Dell, but no major vendors are without aggravating flaws. -- " 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

At 20:12:38 on Friday Friday 02 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote: Now the installation is finished, and I can see what it did to the partitioniing etc. The order of partitions according to ID number (not ux) is as follows: 1) Primary: Boot Manager 2) Logical: sda5 (LinuxV1 - Swapspace2) 3) Logical: sda6 (/) (GRUB) 4) Logical: sda7 (/home) All the above have the sizes I requested. 5) Primary: sda3 (LinuxxT1 - Swap) 6) Primary: sda4 (Unknown) Altogether, accounting for the entire disk. I do not know the meaning of T1 and V1 for the two swaps. Here is the fdisk listing: Device Boot Start End ID System /dev/sda1 1 1 -- a OS/2 Boot Manager /dev/sda2 2 8204 -- 5 Extended /dev/sda3 8205 8466 -- 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda4 8467 30401 -- 83 Linux /dev/sda5 2 271 -- 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 272 2963 -- 82 Linux /dev/sda7 2964 8204 -- 83 Linux So the 'fictitious' particians are real, and overlap the ones I made. I will try to delete tham, but don't know what effect that will have on the 'real ones'. A real snakes nest. Some other things have happened: The Boot Manager, which I carefully made Active, is no longer so. No partition is Active, so booting will be impossible. I think I can fix that by deleting the Boot Manager and making a new one, which will give me the option of making it Active. None of the partitions is Bootable, although I know that I had set sda6 as Bootable. DFSee gives another warning as well warning: The extended partition is marked as Bootable. There is no way I could do that, even if I wanted to, but I have fixed it with DFSee -- truly the Swiss Knife of utilities!! Never have I had such a daunting installation experience. And the only new element (thus probable culprit) in it was the Dell. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

At 03:28:22 on Saturday Saturday 03 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/10/02 23:05 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

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Now the installation is finished, and I can see what it did to the partitioniing etc.

The order of partitions according to ID number (not ux) is as follows:

1) Primary: Boot Manager 2) Logical: sda5 (LinuxV1 - Swapspace2) 3) Logical: sda6 (/) (GRUB) 4) Logical: sda7 (/home)

Right. The DFSee ux column nr matches the number appended to sda.

...

All the above have the sizes I requested.

5) Primary: sda3 (LinuxxT1 - Swap) 6) Primary: sda4 (Unknown)

What type filesystem is on sda4? What type byte Does DFSee show in column 3 of its part tabling, 8e (Linux LVM)? If the installation program put / on sda6, why did it create sda4?

The warning messages are now gone. The BM is Active, the extended partition is no longer Bootable, and sda6 (the / partition, which is labeled GRUB) is marked Bootable. The two superflous primary partitions sda3 and sda4 have been deleted. I have no idea why those two partitions were made. I have done nothing in this installation that I have not done before in several oS installations, and this behavior is entirely new to me. jdd has an explanation, but I do not think it is correct; if it were, I would have seen the same thing in four installation of oS on two seperate desktop machines, and I didn't. The DFSee display now looks exactly as it should. Unfotunately, the system doesn't boot. Instead of Boot Manager, I see a persistent black screen.

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Altogether, accounting for the entire disk.

Sounds like may be a gross overutilization that will have to be discarded later, depending on how many distros you'd like to be able to have on the 250G disk. I've put more than 10 at a time on a disk half that size, and would be satisfied with no less than 3 in your situation: 1-initial, ultimately becoming a maintenance version; 2-next version upgrade; 3-room for trying installation of something else altogether. I'd go back to where you started but switch installation path to the one that obeys what you chose to do in DFSee, using what you created for it rather than adding malorganized redundance.

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I do not know the meaning of T1 and V1 for the two swaps.

I'm sure it's something irrelvant that Jan can answer.

I have a a support request to him already.

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Here is the fdisk listing:

Device Boot Start End ID System /dev/sda1 1 1 -- a OS/2 Boot Manager /dev/sda2 2 8204 -- 5 Extended /dev/sda3 8205 8466 -- 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda4 8467 30401 -- 83 Linux /dev/sda5 2 271 -- 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 272 2963 -- 82 Linux /dev/sda7 2964 8204 -- 83 Linux

So the 'fictitious' particians are real, and overlap the ones I made. I will try to delete tham, but don't know what effect that will have on the 'real ones'. A real snakes nest.

They aren't fiction. They are the proposal converted to reality. And, there's no overlapping beyond the fact that primaries are physically straddling the extended.

That is true. I didn't know how to interpret the presence in the proposal of partitions that I never requested.

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Some other things have happened:

The Boot Manager, which I carefully made Active, is no longer so. No partition is Active, so booting will be impossible. I think I can fix that by deleting the Boot Manager and making a new one, which will give me the option of making it Active.

You shouldn't have to do anything but 'startable 1' from a DFSee command prompt, or choose 'Make THIS partition Active' from DFSee's Mode= menu after first selecting the BM partition to work with.

That's what I did last night, and BM is marked Active.

It won't surprise me a lot if after doing this you wind up being unable to boot Linux except from the DVD, but if the installer did put Grub on / correctly, and not on the MBR, no fix should be required if you've added it to BM's menu.

Partition sda6 (/) is in the BM menu, and it shows as "GRUB". This is where I specified it to be.

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None of the partitions is Bootable, although I know that I had set sda6 as Bootable.

In the context of boot loaders/boot managers, bootable/startable/active are all ways to say the same thing: the selected partition's first table entry byte is set to 80h, which has a special meaning to standard MBR code, and is prominent on examination of DFSee's dump of the MBR table. When set on a logical partition (e.g. sda6) it has no standard meaning.

?? On the desktop machine on which I am writing, the partitioning is done in the same way, and all with logical partitions (three linuces and an OS/2 relic). They are all marked on the DFSee screen with the asterisk, and they all boot.

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DFSee gives another warning as well warning: The extended partition is marked as Bootable.

That's what a Linux installer will sometimes do when given no native primary to provide a home for its native boot loader. Had you specified during installation for where to locate the boot loader only on the / partition, I don't think it should have done that. For anything at all to boot from an active-marked extended I believe requires non-standard boot code in the MBR. To find out you might want to compare a DFSee boot sector dump on your new laptop to one from your desktop, assuming your desktop is still booting from IBM BM and its MBR contains either OS/2 or more generic MBR code.

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There is no way I could do that, even if I wanted to, but I have fixed it with DFSee -- truly the Swiss Knife of utilities!!

I'm fairly sure DFSee would not permit to directly mark the extended, as it does not show an id you can select to act (set active) upon. You could though by direct editing of the MBR table to move the active flag (80h byte) from line 2 to line 1.

Yes, that is why I wrote that I couldn't have done that if I had wanted to. When DFSee showed me the warning, it also indicated how to clear it: Mode > Clean up partition table (approximate wording from memory). I did that, and the warning about misplaced Bootable mark no longer appears.

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Never have I had such a daunting installation experience. And the only new element (thus probable culprit) in it was the Dell.

I think there are probably things from installing long ago you've forgotten, while the awful touchpad was magnifying your frustration. Don't you have an extra standard keyboard and mouse you can plug into the laptop until you get finished with setup?

I initially had a USB trackball that I connected, but it was as erratic than the touchpad. Then I discovered that removing the trackball made the touchpad somewhat less erratic, so I left it out.

-- " 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

At 18:46:58 on Saturday Saturday 03 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/10/03 10:25 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

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The DFSee display now looks exactly as it should. Unfotunately, the system doesn't boot. Instead of Boot Manager, I see a persistent black screen.

The usual DFSee display doesn't show the MBR code. You must ask for it explicitly. Ctrl-B will do that if done immediately after starting

Thank you for this material. Ctrl-B brought up the relevant page. Unfortunately, new computers have narrow screens vertically, so I can see only from 000D0 down, well after the boot code. Beginning at 00FA, however, there is a remark: "Bad part-tables!", then "Error loading OS" and "OpSys not found!". No great surprise that it doesn't boot. =;-/8 Bringing up the Partition-table editor, I can see that it knows that the Boot Manager is Active, and knows numbers for its geometry on the disk. It has numbers also for the extended partiton, because those are implied by the presence of the BM, but not for the logical partitions, which it claims are not used. Is there a way to recover the remaining partitions? Or do I charge the past couple of days up to the learning experience?

DFSee. http://fm.no-ip.com/tmp/dfsee/stanMBR.txt shows that, and looking at the last section (Ctrl-B shows as 'executing: t hex') you can see OS/2 boot code strings. Most likely if you try the same you won't see that. Probably you'll see Grub code there that expects to find the active flag set on the extended, and since it doesn't, and Grub MBR code has no space for error messages to be displayed when something goes wrong, you get a blank screen. If I'm right about your current problem, 'newmbr 1' from DFSee command line should give you back your BM menu by replacing Grub MBR code with OS/2 MBR code.

...

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It won't surprise me a lot if after doing this you wind up being unable to boot Linux except from the DVD, but if the installer did put Grub on / correctly, and not on the MBR, no fix should be required if you've added it to BM's menu.

This was my forecast of what your current situation seems to be.

If you find I'm right about what I think the current state is and you do as I spell out above it would be because Grub is not properly installed on /. You would need to boot the oS rescue system on the DVD to properly install Grub to / (sda6).

The Grub installation scripts from rescue might not do what you expect. They might put Grub back onto the extended and the MBR. I never use an oS rescue system myself, preferring to either boot a Knoppix CD or another installed Linux elsewhere on HD and install manually from a Grub prompt. http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Installing-GRUB-nativ ely explains how I install Grub manually. It only takes a few commands and doesn't require having the target partition properly mounted, or even mounted at all.

...

On the desktop machine on which I am writing, the partitioning is done in the same way, and all with logical partitions (three linuces and an OS/2 relic). They are all marked on the DFSee screen with the asterisk, and they all boot.

But there in order to be using IBM BM the MBR code is either generic or IBM virtual generic.

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I initially had a USB trackball that I connected, but it was as erratic than the touchpad. Then I discovered that removing the trackball made the touchpad somewhat less erratic, so I left it out.

Old ones used wheels instead of optics, got dirty fast, which made them erratic. I just ordered http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/414650-REG/Kensington_64327_Orbit _Optical_Trackball_USB.html a few days ago.

This trackball is an optical one, so its behavior can't be blamed on dirty wheels.

-- " 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

At 22:30:45 on Saturday Saturday 03 October 2009, "Carlos E. R." wrote:

On Saturday, 2009-10-03 at 20:45 +0200, Stan Goodman wrote:

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At 18:46:58 on Saturday Saturday 03 October 2009, Felix Miata <> wrote:

...

On 2009/10/03 10:25 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

...

The DFSee display now looks exactly as it should. Unfotunately, the system doesn't boot. Instead of Boot Manager, I see a persistent black screen.

The usual DFSee display doesn't show the MBR code. You must ask for it explicitly. Ctrl-B will do that if done immediately after starting

Thank you for this material.

Ctrl-B brought up the relevant page. Unfortunately, new computers have narrow screens vertically, so I can see only from 000D0 down, well after the boot code. Beginning at 00FA, however, there is a remark: "Bad part-tables!", then "Error loading OS" and "OpSys not found!". No great surprise that it doesn't boot. =;-/8

Nonononono.

Those are the messages that the "booter" can print if there is a problem, a different short message for each problem the designer considered. It does not mean at all that you have (or not) any of those problems.

This would be the method to do that in linux - in my case, the mbr contains grub specific code:

# dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr count=512 bs=1 512+0 records in 512+0 records out 512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.00280838 s, 182 kB/s

# hexdump -C mbr ... 00000180 fe 47 52 55 42 20 00 47 65 6f 6d 00 48 61 72 64 |.GRUB .Geom.Hard| 00000190 20 44 69 73 6b 00 52 65 61 64 00 20 45 72 72 6f | Disk.Read. Erro|

What I did in my ignorance was to follow the lead of DFSee. Given that the partition table was missing, I asked DFSee to check the actual partitions. It did this in six monutes flat, and made a file for the data it collected. I thought to use these data tomorrow to fill in the blanks in the partition editor, and make a fresh MBR. When I rebooted (for no good reason), I found that all that had been done for me, and that the machine booted to the Boot manager, which passed things on to GRUB, and presented me with a running openSuSE. I could not be more pleased -- also because I have learned a good bit during all this, especially about the machine and about features of DFSee. that I never had to use before. I am extremely grateful to those here who have had the patience (which could not always have been easy) to help me, expecially Felix, Jean-Daniel, Per, yourself, and anybody I left out. This is a good group. If anybody thinks, by the way, that I exaggerated in my annoyance with the touchpad, I invite them to google <vostro touchpad disable>. The device is a disaster. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

At 04:22:41 on Sunday Sunday 04 October 2009, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/10/03 20:45 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

...

Ctrl-B brought up the relevant page. Unfortunately, new computers have narrow screens vertically, so I can see only from 000D0 down, well after the boot code. Beginning at 00FA, however, there is a remark: "Bad

This needs to be brought to Jan's attention on the DFSee

And I intend to do that. I will also ask about the matter of some keys producing incorrect characters.

Running DFSee for Linux you can see prior output using the PgUp key, & PgDn to return. There's a reminder near bottom right. Booted to the DFSDOS CD you can also scroll partial screens using shift-Up/shift-Dn. -- " 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