Bugzilla – Bug 121698
yast partitioner feature request
Last modified: 2006-01-23 18:38:05 UTC
The YaST partitioner list the Amiga partition table (which is used on Pegasos2 PPC), as it's based on parted, which knows the Amiga partition table. But if I try to modify the partitions, YaST thinks immediately in PC partitions (primary, extended and logical partitions), and tries to write the MBR according to this. It would be nice, if the Amiga partition table would be recognized, and partitioning suggestions would be done according to this. And, of course, for empty HDDs one should be able to set to use Amiga partition table from a menu.
Supporting an additional partiton table type is lot of work. It involves changing YaST2 and probably fixing bugs in parted too. I have no one idea about amiga partition table so I certainly cannot do that.
Parted seems so work fine, less than 5 minutes to fully partiton a new disk, and I never knew anything about parted or Amiga partition table at all. I was able to create a partition table with just a simple "mklabel amiga" and then create partitions with mkpart. The only difference from the PC partition table seems to be the lack of extended partition. Right now I have 7 partitions, but I can test, what the maximum is, if you want.
So it is not really a problem for someone with such a partition table to do his partitioning outside of YaST2 and use existing partitions during installation. No idea what the bootloader do with an amiga partitition table.
Yes, it works fine, and is documented at http://www.opensuse.org/PPC:Boot_pegasos But for novice users (I use Linux 10+ years) it would be difficult to use parted, and are afraid of 'Expert' partitioning. Booting is a seperate issue. On a Pegasos, the first partition needs to be an ext2 or ext3 partition (these are supported by the firmware). This has a file, called 'menu' written in forth, which has easy and straightforward menuentries. Or a kernel be directly booted from the firmware from any ext2/ext3 partitions, and then no 'menu' or seperate first partition is needed . This means that no bootloader should be installed from YaST, only a kernel prepared as described on the openSUSE wiki. Booting is very well documented in Pegasos documentation.
An ODW (a computer built around the Pegasos2 mainboard) is available at Matthias Fruhauf, if you could take a closer look.
Please take a look at http://www.ppczone.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=419 If partitioning a HDD with an Amiga partition table is not supported, please at least warn the user about it. YaST should detect, if there is already an Amiga partition table on the HDD, and if so, then print a warning message like this: "An _Amiga_ partition table was detected on $hdd_device_name . YaST does not support writing/modifying it. You can use currently available partitions using the expert partitioner (it can also format existing partitions). If you change any partitions, YaST will write an _MSDOS_ partition table, and all of your current data on that HDD will be lost" # parted /dev/hda print Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0kB - 40GB Disk label type: amiga Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 8225kB 1078MB 1069MB ext2 boot 2 1078MB 2147MB 1069MB linux-swap swap 3 2147MB 12GB 9656MB reiserfs susea 4 12GB 21GB 9656MB ext3 suse 5 21GB 31GB 9656MB ext3 gentoo Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary. so a quick check of: parted /dev/hda print | grep label | grep amiga would be sufficent to see, if amiga partitioning is there. BTW: http://www.ppczone.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=410 MSDOS partitioning is not supported, but it "works for me".
In case the partition table type is unsupported by YaST2 we now show a popup with an explanation and set the partition table to readonly (so that the partitions can be used, e.g. formated, but no partitions can be created, removed, resized, ...).
I could not see any popup or explanation in Alpha3. I still have the above mentioned partiton table on my Pegasos.
Please provide the YaST2 logs of the Alpha3 installation (or installation try).
Created attachment 58326 [details] YaST2 logs
From the logs I can see that the amiga partition was detected and the popup called. Maybe the callbacks for popups aren't installed at that time - I will check that.
Instead of a popup, a big, fat, red warning message should be on the summary page, just as with package selection or boot manager problems. That does not require any new technology, and does not go away with just a click.
It's even in the logs: The callbacks are installed too late. And the popup isn't new technology. There are already other popups.
But popups disappear with one click of the mouse. The red text on the installation screen stays there, and annoys the user to read it carefully and understand it.
Popuo should be visiable with SL10.1 beta#1. Additonally the disk is marked "readonly" which prevents the user from inadevertently creating, deleting and resizing partitions but allows formatting of existing partitions.
Popup is annoying. It shows up not only before the partitioner starts, but also for "software management", where one can't change partitions at all.
You are right, will see if I can show it at a more appropriate place and suppress it for other YaST2 parts that need partition information.
Should be better in beta#2. - Will only show during installation and when calling "yast2 disk" - Popup will come later than before.