Feature changed by: Robert Davies (robopensuse) Feature #307378, revision 5 Title: YaST2 Partitioner should detect external partition type changes and update fstab openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) reject date: 2009-08-12 15:02:52 reject reason: Moved to 11.3. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.3: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Alexander shaduri (alex_sh) Description: If partition was changed from fat32 to ntfs externally, there's no way to specify that in YaST Partitioner. Initial partition layout: sda1: fat32 (empty), sda2: ext3 linux /, etc... The first thing I did was install openSUSE 11.1. YaST correctly identified fat32 partition and wrote the respective line to fstab. Then, I installed Vista on sda1. The problem with Vista is that it won't install to fat32, it needs ntfs. So, it converted sda1 to ntfs and installed ok. Now, the problem is that fstab in openSUSE still contained "vfat" as filesystem type. KDE4 wouldn't open in from Konqueror, etc... I tried to make YaST re-learn the type of sda1, so it would write the correct line to fstab, since I didn't remember what are the openSUSE-default options for ntfs-3g. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. I think this will affect lots of people who, for example, had XP and decided to switch to Vista. Also, since openSUSE doesn't allow formatting to ntfs, this will also affect all the people who install Linux on a clean disk (reserving a space for Windows with fat32 partition), and then install XP or Vista, converting the filesystem to ntfs in the process. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install openSUSE on a clean disk, making the first partition fat32. 2. Convert the first partition to ntfs via third-party tool. 3. Try to use the drive from openSUSE as an average "joe the user". I filed it as a bug https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524784 and was told that this was a feature request - "The partitioner does assume that the enties in fstab are correct and does not try to fix them. Changing this behaviour requires a feature request." So, here it is. Discussion: #1: Peter Cranen (phacranen) (2009-09-08 18:22:49) This is a show stopper for me to use Suse, Iĺl see if ubuntu does create NTFS partitions, If iḿ not mistaken, slackware was able to create all types of filesystems already in 1999.? + #2: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-01 00:51:24) + Personally I think it should be possible to set a filesystem type, + without making a file system; it's a large reason to do my partitioning + with more traditional tools, than GUI partitioners. + Why not permit setting the partition type from simplified selection + (Linux, Linux Swap, Linux Raid, Linux LVM, Windows), but leaving + unformatted and not mounting? + There ought though be more validation for filesystems that are going to + be mounted, and not reformatted, at present mistakes can cause abort of + Installation wasting much time spent on software selection for + instance. + Perhaps using the 'auto' feature for filesystem type in fstab(5) would + be better rather than hard coding, but even better to decouple + filesystem selection (for unmounted filesystems) from format/do not + format; but decide whether to format a new partition, or re-format a + partition based on the selections. + MS made bad mistake when they confuse their users, by conflating drive + & partition and talk of Quick format and format. Why confuse Linux + users by mixing the concepts up? For most FS type is irrelevant and + they can just take default option, but ironically FAT32 & NTFS will be + familiar. The converted from Win32 NTFS partitions may not be as + efficient, as a cleanly formatted NTFS with appropriate MS default + options. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/307378