On 3/14/22 15:59, Felix Miata wrote:
Marc Chamberlin composed on 2022-03-14 15:24 (UTC-0700):
Yes, I do understand there are other aspects of partition management, such as resizing or moving partitions, but I don't understand why you are wanting to separate mounting from partition management. To me, that seems like an arbitrary decision and a strange model of what a partitioner is. Mounting is something done with filesystems, not partitions, though their names are routinely used coincidently. Partitions without filesystems cannot be mounted. Filesystems need not take up entire partitions, as we have LVM that adds and divides in multiple ways, and RAID that combines. And then there's BTRFS, which does all the above, and more.
*"Partitioning (and filesystem formatting) on my disks is something done before any installer is started, and never changed during installation. The openSUSE/YaST partitioner is used here only for designating which filesystems are to be mounted where.*"
Felix - Thank you for your thoughts and taking the time to reply. Your last paragraph captures yet a different nuance about the purpose of the YaST partitioner. You and I both view it as a tool for defining what filesystems are mounted where. But whereas you seem to be saying that you don't use it to define partitions and for setting them up, others seem to be saying that is the main purpose that the YaST partitioner and only what it should be used for. I view it as doing both (and more) and use it to do both (and more). So my takeaway is that in your eyes you also seem to have yet another different view of the Yast partitioner, from the way others are viewing it. I probably have not expressed myself very succinctly or clearly in my previous postings. Trying to convey ones thoughts in a way that won't cause confusion is always very difficult. Clearly the openSuSE/YaST partitioner is doing multiple tasks, but I really did not want to get into the weeds over semantics. Besides defining and creating partitions, another task that the YaST partitioner is doing is creating lines in fstab. Whether one is editing fstab by hand or is using the YaST partitioner, the result is the same. The user is also defining a relationship between file system mount points and partitions. I don't know of any other tool that defines these relationships or edits and add such definitions to fstab. If there is a separate tool that should be used to define and persist these relationships, please point it out to me. OpenSuSE certainly does not make it easy to find any other such tool that should be used for defining the connections between partitions and mount points! There has been mention of a tool called gparted (which is not supplied as a standard tool nor supplied by default in a fresh OpenSuSE installation. I am not familiar with it since it is not a part of the YaST tool set nor easily discoverable.) but AFAIK it does not edit fstab nor define connections between partitions and mount points either. When I tell the YaST partitioner to commit the changes, that I have made while using it, I also clearly see that the function to actually mount all the defined partitions at their mount points is carried out, before the YaST partitioner terminates. (I suspect by making a call to "mount -all") To my "user" eyes this is also clearly one of the YaST partitioner purposes also, and I don't know how to stop it from doing so. So the YaST partitioner is clearly doing several things, defining partitions, defining the binding between partitions and their mount points, persisting this relationship between partitions and mount points, and actually having the mounts committed and done. To my user oriented eye, that is the model of the YaST partitioner I was referring to in my earlier postings. The YaST partitioner may be misnamed because it in fact IS doing much more than just partitioning "tasks". I have gotten a lot of push-back on this with folks seeming to be saying that the main purpose of the YaST partitioner is just do partitioning tasks and should be used only for that purpose, i.e. to set up and define or redefine partitions, and I strongly disagree! Especially since I don't have or know of any good alternative tool(s) to use! It is also DEFINING the binding of partitions to file system mount points, persisting those relationships, and actually committing (by mounting) those partitions at their mount points. A significant portion of the YaST partitioner's GUI is also defined so as to carry out ALL of these tasks. If the scope of the YaST partitioner's purpose should be limited to just doing partition management (like gparted appears to be) then it is overstepping it's authority because it is actually doing much more. I know this may appear to be nit-picking but clear communication is a two way street and I should not be faulted for thinking that the model behind the YaST partitioner is to do all of these tasks, and therefore it's purpose is to be more than being just a partitioner, because performing all these other tasks IS exactly what the YaST "partitioner" is in fact doing! This underlines the fallacy of the argument to just use the YaST partitioner for partitioning only, (like gparted). If so then what tool should I be using to define and persist the relationship between partitions and mount points? I know that the mount command can define the relationship between a partition and a mount point (not always easily) and mount it, but I scanned the man pages for mount, and found no way to persist newly defined relationships back into the fstab file via the mount command. Therefore my complaint and request for help stands, as a user, I would expect to be able to continue to use the YaST partitioner in a Live OpenSuSE environment in the same way as I use it in an installed disk-based system. Or I need some other tool to easily define and persist the relationship between partitions and mount points. In other words I expect to be able to use it, to EASILY make and persist these same bindings in a live environment. (hand editing fstab is NOT an easy solution and requires a lot of low level detailed knowledge) And I can't, with the YaST partitioner, because of the YaST partitioner's inability to understand the existence of the "/" directory in the live environment. To my eyes, that is inconsistent and therefore a bug that should be addressed and fixed. Someone mentioned that he wanted the Yast partitioner, in a live environment, to only affect a target disk based system. I disagree, but do agree that should be an option. I am exploring some of the alternatives suggested and have not yet reached a conclusion about those other approaches yet. I did find out that one proposed possible solutions, using dolphin, did not meet one of the requirements that I want, in a live environment, that is dolphin's lack of persistence. There may be other tools or parameters that I am not aware of yet, that I need, in regards to using some of the other workarounds, that will make them either a non-starter or a viable solution, and I will let you know. ----- There seems to be some confusion, in this thread, between the "rescue" environment and a "live" environment also. To me, a "rescue" environment is referring to the system that is started by using the menu item found on the installation DVD or USB sticks (2nd menu page) for booting the system up in rescue mode. That is a very limited form of the full "live" version that I downloaded from the openSuSE downloads website. The available tool set of the "rescue" environment is quite limited and unacceptable, not to mention that it too lacks persistence, and doesn't appear to be expandable either by downloading and installing new packages that I need for solving the problems I have been trying to solve in getting OpenSuSE 15.2 upgraded to OpenSuSE 15.3. Carlos mentioned there is something called a "Rescue LiveCD" which I haven't found/tried yet for SuSE15.3, and perhaps that is causing some of the confusion? I remember a while back one could download something called a Rescue LiveCD but I haven't seen that in ages, and there is no mention of an ISO with that name here - https://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/15.3/live/ The out of the box upgrade, from 15.2 to 15.3 failed on me, it simply hangs in a black screen and the log files did not provide a clue or error message saying why. So I am trying to figure out why, and I'm using an OpenSuSE 15.3 live USB stick which should prove to be very helpful if I can get it to work. And that is what caused me to initiate this discussion. I want to be able to instrument some of the startup scripts, on the disk based system, so that I can better understand what is happening when I try to boot up my upgraded OpenSuSE 15.3 system and find where and how it is failing. (No, log files have not been helpful either, which is why I want to do some more instrumentation.) I plan to do this iteratively which is why I want persistence in setting up the Live USB stick. Therefore I want to be able to mount partitions from my disk based system into my live OpenSuSE 15.3 system on a USB stick. I don't want to have to learn new tools, such as gparted, unless I absolutely have to, and I really don't want to have to understand all the nitty gritty details about partitions, mount processes etc., I got enough things on my plate to learn about! Which is why I want to use the YaST2 partitioner, it makes it easy to define and use mount points without having to understand a lot of underlying details and commands. Again thanks for your time (in reading this rather long post) and help, Marc... -- --... ...-- .----. ... -.. . .-- .- --... .--. -..- .-- -- .- .-. -.-. <b>Computers: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the user Marc.<br> His mission: to explore strange new hardware. To seek out new software and new applications.<br> To boldly go where no Marc has gone before!<br></b>