Jonathan Arnold wrote: > Richard Creighton wrote: > >> Greg Freemyer wrote: >> >> <snip> > I don't understand - you have full control over where the MBR is installed. > By default, it goes on the first drive found. If you want to change that, > you are free to do so. I don't understand why you have to unplug the IDE. I > have the same setup (well, not RAID but a mix of IDE & SATA) and 10.3 actually > installed better than 10.2 on this system. Not sure why you would blame > the installation program. > > Not true...the install program writes to the drive presented as the first bootable drive presented by BIOS under normal conditions, which under normal conditions is your IDE drive. My BIOS allows the SATA drive to be presented 1st and the IDE to be presented last which is the option I chose for this installation. When 10.3 renamed my IDE drive to SDA and it was bootable, IT became the drive where the install program wrote the MBR and I had NO CHOICE. FWIW, I had previously installed 10.2 on the SATA in the MD Raid so I had TWO 10.2 installations, one in the IDE drive and one in the 4 drive MD raid SATA array and it worked perfectly and the MBR for the MD Raid was written correctly on the SATA drive and left the IDE drive alone. When I attempted the same thing with the 10.3, the renaming of the IDE drive to SDA apparently occurred after the install of the program files and the GRUB and MBR updates went to the first bootable drive it now found which was, of course, SDA (formerly the IDE drive containing 10.2) and not the SATA drives containing the new 10.3 installation. So, I blame the installation program.
>> So, while the motive to migrate is honorable, the decision to do so >> unilaterally and without proper notice and warning about possible side >> effects between minor releases I maintain is and was still ill >> advised. To do so between version 10 and version 11 would have been >> > > For one, 10.3 is still in testing. For another, the drive renaming is > mentioned in the Release Notes: > > http://www.suse.com/relnotes/i386/openSUSE/10.3/RELEASE-NOTES.en.html#08 > > The release notes are displayed *after* a successful installation is complete. Perhaps they should be displayed BEFORE the installation starts. As to the fact that 10.3 is still in testing....I have beta tested every version since 9.3 and have always had a 2nd drive with my primary installation and a 2nd drive for the beta install. Starting with 10.2, I also had a new system with SATA drives which were used as the 2nd drive and I also experimented with MD Raid installation of 10.3 onto a 1TB MD Raid on those (4) SATA drives with no problems. I simply wasn't expecting with a minor version release, to have my primary IDE partition affected so drastically. If I had, I would have disconnected the IDE drive electrically but previous experience did not dictate that necessity. Had the installation program functioned properly, it still wouldn't have been necessary. As a beta tester, I am willing to risk my machine and data and time to uncover bugs. I uncovered a major one here and it is directly related to the decision to absorb the IDE drives into the SATA/SCSI world without completely thinking through all the ramifications. Another side effect that is affecting more than a few is the fact that IDE drives can be partitioned up to 64 partitions. The limitation as a SDxx drive is now 16. This makes conversion impossible for some people. How are they going to upgrade? Only after great gnashing of teeth has there been any provision for this little oversight. The great unwashed masses aren't going to be so forgiving if SuSE Linux suddenly causes them to lose data and they aren't technically inclined enough to be able to fix it themselves. Oh, that's another thing...the repair program is still badly broken....especially if you have an LVM or MD Raid installation. Seems to me that if you are allowed to install the OS on such a structure and something needs fixing, then the 'fixing' program should at least not break it further. So, I do blame the installation program and as a beta tester, I darned sure uncovered a bug, a big fat one. Richard >> much more appropriate, but from .2 to .3, that usually signifies >> relatively minor changes and enhancements and bug fixes and not major >> changes. Since I can recall, IDE devices have been called HDxx and >> drivers and software buried pretty deep has expected this for years. >> To suddenly change this invites trouble, and it happened. I would have >> simply unplugged the IDE drive if I had expected trouble, but the >> stability of SuSE upgrades in the past even in beta has never put drives >> not part of the experiment at risk before and I grew complacent ... my >> bad, add a bad decision on the development end and a lot of people >> are going to wonder what happened. The buglist reports bear that out >> already. >> > > I still don't get why the drive renaming is a big deal. I have virtually > never had to deal with the actual name of the drive and don't see why I > care what it is called. > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
