https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=726756
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=726756#c7
--- Comment #7 from Bryan Webb 2011-11-07 19:19:46 UTC ---
I assume comment #5 is to me, the reporter...
Thanks for the rapid feedback!
I'm not sure that "looks strange to some partitioning tools" is or should
be normal. Why?
(A) USB sticks are becoming more popular than CD/DVD media,and
(B) it is NOT that the partition table looks strange to some partitioning
tools, it is that the consequent error messages are scary to the
user, and
(C) the level of expertise required to deal with the consequences of this
situation is quite high.
Rationale:
(1) Originally, to create the disk, I used imagewriter. Later at your
request, I tried dd. Same results.
(2) I never tried to modify the ISO image. I just tried to show you that the
image is bad, according to YaST2->DiskPartitioner/parted, and fdisk.
(3) I investigated this area because of the problem reported in Bug#728634, a
real killer for me.
(4) Regarding "To use the usb disk in a normal way later, wipe the partition
table and create a new one"...
(a) I found that, as expected, fdisk can fix it (though it complains
explicitly about the problem as noted above).
(b) Yast2->DiskPartitioner is more problematic. In addition to the
initial warning I mentioned, where it says:
The partitioning on disk /dev/sdc is not readable by
the partitioning tool parted, which is used to change the
partition table.
You can use the partitions on disk /dev/sdc as they are.
You can format them and assign mount points to them, but you
cannot add, edit, resize, or remove partitions from that
disk with this tool.
Indeed, using right click on /dev/sdc1, there is no option to "remove"
the partition, but there is one to "delete" it. Try that and you get
another scary popup. [inconsistent wording bug]
If you try to "delete" /dev/sdc, a popup confirms it. However...
/dev/sdc1 is NOT removed from the list, AND attempting to now
"Add Partition" to /dev/sdc yields another scary msg, and refuses
to add the partition.
I did not see a way to format /dev/sdc using Yast->DiskPartitioner.
I could create a new partition table, but then it asked "which type?"
MSDOS or GPT? Which to choose? No Help available from
DiskPartitioner on this point (and I haven't tried it).
(5) You might say, "Well, go plug it into your Windows7 box and fix it
there". That doesn't work. Windows7 recognizes it is unusable, offers
to format it for you, then fails. The USB stick is unusable, unless you
know about fdisk.
OK, there's a bunch of problems here, and putting the currentISO image on a
USB stick is a good way to unit test a bunch of different programs, however
I submit that the user has got to be a professional sysadmin or developer
to work around this issue. Who else knows about fdisk? Or would click the
"Expert" button in DiskPartitioner? The problem appears to be an imagewriter
issue to the normal user, and imagewriter has been promoted by the openSuSE
project.
If this is not causing the problem in Bug#728634, *I* can get by. But I bet
a bunch of other people can't.
P.S. Do you suppose the bad ISO image format is why imagewriter on Windows7
throws a popup at the end of the write operation saying that it failed?
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