On 2009/12/09 21:18 (GMT+1030) Rodney Baker composed:

On Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:09:32 jdd-gmane wrote:

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Le 09/12/2009 11:16, Rodney Baker a écrit :

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booting from a primary partition or booting from an extended partition (which, remember, is a virtual partition with a partition number above 5).

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no. partitions with number 5 and up are logical partitions. extended is the container for logicals and can be 1-4 (it's a primary one)

Right you are. I knew that it didn't look quite right when I typed it and I was going to change it, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.

To be perfectly clear, all HD partitions are virtual, involving nothing more physical than the orientation of the magnetic bits in the bytes of each partition table entry, and nothing physical whatsoever within filesystem space. Virtual is here just a synonym for logical. Thus, _all_ partitions on a HD are logical. The significant difference between what we call primary and what we call logical is quite simply the location of the partition "table" entry that defines every partition's logical start and end. There is nothing different about the filesystems that get installed on them after partitioning is set that has anything to do with partitioning. The reason for distinguishing between "primary" and "logical" partitions applies entirely to the boot process. Once booted, a partition is a partition is a partition, all of which are just labels for the locations of discrete filesystems - except for the extended, which never contains a filesystem and is merely a pointer to the location of the next sector containing partition table data, irrelevant post-boot to anything except boot loader reconfiguration. -- " We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Brian K. White wrote:

jdd-gmane wrote:

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Le 09/12/2009 11:16, Rodney Baker a écrit :

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booting from a primary partition or booting from an extended partition (which, remember, is a virtual partition with a partition number above 5).

no. partitions with number 5 and up are logical partitions. extended is the container for logicals and can be 1-4 (it's a primary one)

jdd

True for MSDOS Disklabel, not GPT.

The OP is right though. I completely understand how grub (and lilo) works, yet I do not know what will result from various yast bootloader choices. After lots of methodical trial & error just for the purposes of mapping that out, still some things are unpredictable by me.

And that is a problem because with a thing like this the details are everything.

So I don't bother to use it anymore. I always have to configure grub completely manually during install, or sometimes after install by booting the installer only to use it's shell to manually mount and chroot.

The one thing that yast gets right for me so far is that kernel updates have so far managed never to break the grub config that I have previously configured manually. I never quite trust it so after any updates I go look over the boot-related files myself before rebooting, but so far they haven't needed correcting, for a wonder. ("so far" == from 9.1 to current)

Yeah Brian I think you and Istvan are hitting the nail on the head so to speak... I have been letting this thread run a bit without responding, because I need time to grok the replies... Trouble is most responses have been asking me to study grub, and disk partitioning. And I think I understand these in principal. What the YaST2 bootloader configuration tool is trying to do is wrap up these low level tools with a model of some kind, that will make it easier for the user (me) to understand and use. But exactly what the YaST2 tool does is a mystery, i.e. not intuitive at least to me, and I am reluctant to do much experimenting with it. It is a dangerous tool and if I do something wrong I may well end up with a real mess, i.e. an unbootable system... It would be awfully helpful, I think, if the details of what exactly happens was documented and presented in the Help dialogs, i.e. what grub commands are created and executed, for each of the location choices that are offered. The grub documentation does not talk about booting in terms of boot partitions, root partitions, extended partitions, or just the MBR per say. Instead it talks in terms of where the Stage1, 1.5 and 2 bootloaders go, how to specify these using grub commands, and the concepts of direct loading versus chainloading... What is worse is that some sort of arbitrary disk ordering is going on, so even when I specify I want to install the bootloader in the MBR, I am not sure what drive I am installing it on! I think that part of my own confusion is arising because the developers of YaST2's bootloader configuration tool have overloaded it and are allowing the same tool to be used in two very different environments.. One is during installation of a new system on a computer, and the other is after the system has been installed. What does it mean, for example, to change the boot definition of a bootloader, for an already installed system, to use the boot partition, when there is no real partition being mounted as /boot? To me, that option makes sense if and only if I am setting up the boot loader while installing and setting up partitions at the same time... But it does not make sense to me, to be able to change this after a system has already been installed and partitioning defined... And I don't dare experiment with it, for fear of breaking my system. For example, (and I could build other scenarios... ) if I were to reconfigure the boot location of the boot loader for an already installed system, to locate it in the "boot partition" - WHAT is going to happen when I click on the Finish button? (Which is my only option at that point...) I have not been asked which partition is the "boot partition" or to define one! So I hesitate and don't go any further because I simply have no understanding of what is about to happen if I do! Indeed, I may wish to set up a separate boot partition, but since I am not being asked where the boot partition is, how do I know if this will work? Even if I set up the boot partition before or after I reconfigure(d) the bootloader? There is no documentation that I can find that tells me what the effect will be, and I seem to be having troubles getting such an answer here also... The focus of my questions is not how grub works, or how/what partitioning is, but instead, how is this YaST2 bootloader configuration tool modeling things and what is the exact meaning behind this, supposed easy to use user interface, for configuring the bootloader? I think that my biggest complaint about this tool is that a GUI tool is suppose to act as a guide for a user, and bring that user to a successful conclusion, one that the user can fully understand, for the given task of setting up the bootloader(s). And so far I have been unable to use this tool for this purpose, in a way that gives me high confidence that I understand what I am doing when I use it. I like the fact that it is attempting to simply the amount of knowledge I need, in order to configure a bootloader. But honestly, I do not know how to use this tool because it is not presenting me with an easy to understand model of what it will do when I select these various options. Marc... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Marc Chamberlin [12-11-09 20:49]: *MANY* *re*quoted lines of mat'l removed

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Sorry, guess I didn't proofread my posting very well, got in a hurry! So made a few corrections and resubmit it... Changes italicized, hope that works and reads better..

No problem about proofing, but please explain how "italicized" text appears in a text mode application/forum? -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* Marc Chamberlin [12-11-09 23:08]:

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Oh fizzlesticks! My bad! I guess I am too use to the wonders of Thunderbird and html... Someday perhaps all apps will advance to the point of having change controls and highlighting...

Certainly NOT! -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org