Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sat, Jul 25 2015, Mick wrote: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 16:32:19 Daniel Frey wrote: Is Windows writing a hybrid partition table? Maybe use something like parted to check. Dan MSwindows these days installs a separate boot partition. The MSWindows boot manager can be chainloaded from there, but then it needs to be able to read the (GPT) partition table of the main OS, which in this case seems to be having trouble with. However, I am thinking that the URL I posted may refer to the bootloader (as in the MBR boot code) having trouble booting from a GPT table, rather than the MSWindows boot manager itself hmmm ... this needs some testing. Allan, have you tried first creating the partitions and FAT32/NTFS filesystems, BEFORE you attempted to install MSWindows? Thank you and daniel for your help. The system came with windows 7 on the whole disk 500GB. To shrink it to 50 takes work as there are unmovable files in the middle (the are there since you must actually moved them). Anyway I didn't try but simply removed the big partition (I left the dell partition and the windows recovery partition). I then installed linux (an error) leaving a partition for windows. Linux installed cleanly (after applying canek's two-step procedure for profile setting). With my laptop I got a windows 8.1 recovery/installation flash drive. I installed 8.1 (trivial) and then the trouble began. 8.1 is a *very* different interface. I couldn't even find logout. Also the version sent is buggy. I don't remember how I eventually exited. After that the system wouldn't boot from the hard drive even after I re-executed grub2-install and fdisk (both from the arch linux flash drive). I then belatedly remembered that I should install windows first so that linux is the last one to set the boot loader. Windows (8.1) installed trivially but worked very poorly. I called dell, and they had me install windows updates and network drivers. Then windows worked. But the interface is still foreign. I am now reinstalling gentoo from the arch-linux flash. allan PS reinstalling linux is very much faster that doing it the first time; the handbook seems much better than it seemed last week. I only install once every three years when I buy a new machine and have forgotten everything.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 13:39:13 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: When you said a new install, I assumed it was a newer computer, but if you don't have UEFI and want Windows you are apparently stuck with MBR. Neil, I don't know why you make such a fuss about MBR. I've been using it ever since 1989, and though I used to have to work round some of its limitations years ago, the setup I have now has been stable for at least 10 years. It ain't broke, so I don't intend to fix it. I'm not making a fuss, I just wondered why use it on a new system? It works, in a kuldged about and fragile way, but it works well enough to stick with it. I never bothered to convert any disks, that is far too much work. And this Armari box is five years old or more and still perfectly capable since I replaced the disks with SSDs this year. That's when I would have changed. If I have to replace the motherboard for some reason, then will be time to adopt what I'm forced into. N one is forcing you (unless you have a UEFI board), and more than anyone is telling you not to use a 2.4 series kernel. -- Neil Bothwick I@love~my,;It's%made in Taiwa~##$ ` #@ pgpCyPIA46Jw8.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, Jul 26 2015, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 09:09:57 -0400, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: PS I checked and the gentoo installation guide says that gpt without uefi prevents dual booting windows. So the answer to the question of why are you using a 1980s partition table is that you want to use a 1990s operating system on it? ;-) When you said a new install, I assumed it was a newer computer, but if you don't have UEFI and want Windows you are apparently stuck with MBR. It does have UEFI and perhaps I should have learned how to use it. I understand that while gpt is easy to use uefi takes some effort to learn. I don't use windows but the dell hardware support is much better if you have windows available to dual boot into. allan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sat, Jul 25 2015, Mick wrote: I'm afraid you're right: Can Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 read, write, and boot from GPT disks? Yes, all versions can use GPT partitioned disks for data. Booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn640535(v=vs.85).aspx#gpt_faq_xp64_boot Unless you have a good reason for dual booting, why don't you install MSWindows in a VM? My son wanted me to do that. I didn't because Something else to learn (I don't run a vm). I didn't want to face dell support with linux and xen underneath the supported windows.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sunday 26 July 2015 11:15:03 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 09:09:57 -0400, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: PS I checked and the gentoo installation guide says that gpt without uefi prevents dual booting windows. So the answer to the question of why are you using a 1980s partition table is that you want to use a 1990s operating system on it? ;-) When you said a new install, I assumed it was a newer computer, but if you don't have UEFI and want Windows you are apparently stuck with MBR. Neil, I don't know why you make such a fuss about MBR. I've been using it ever since 1989, and though I used to have to work round some of its limitations years ago, the setup I have now has been stable for at least 10 years. It ain't broke, so I don't intend to fix it. And this Armari box is five years old or more and still perfectly capable since I replaced the disks with SSDs this year. If I have to replace the motherboard for some reason, then will be time to adopt what I'm forced into. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The state of public relations?
On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 08:23:22 -0600, Jc García wrote: * I clicked send before I was finished editing. Good thing it was only an email and not a graphical installer ;-) -- Neil Bothwick It's no use crying over spilt milk -- it only makes it salty for the cat. pgpTTHvbQjDwL.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On 07/26/2015 07:35 AM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: On Sat, Jul 25 2015, Mick wrote: On Saturday 25 Jul 2015 16:32:19 Daniel Frey wrote: Is Windows writing a hybrid partition table? Maybe use something like parted to check. Dan MSwindows these days installs a separate boot partition. The MSWindows boot manager can be chainloaded from there, but then it needs to be able to read the (GPT) partition table of the main OS, which in this case seems to be having trouble with. However, I am thinking that the URL I posted may refer to the bootloader (as in the MBR boot code) having trouble booting from a GPT table, rather than the MSWindows boot manager itself hmmm ... this needs some testing. Allan, have you tried first creating the partitions and FAT32/NTFS filesystems, BEFORE you attempted to install MSWindows? Thank you and daniel for your help. The system came with windows 7 on the whole disk 500GB. To shrink it to 50 takes work as there are unmovable files in the middle (the are there since you must actually moved them). Anyway I didn't try but simply removed the big partition (I left the dell partition and the windows recovery partition). I then installed linux (an error) leaving a partition for windows. Now I can't go and look back on the thread as I've deleted some messages... is this a new laptop with an UEFI BIOS? If that's the case you must use GPT with UEFI while booting Windows, and make sure Secure Boot is off in the BIOS settings if you want to use linux. I am not sure if Windows will boot if it was installed with Secure Boot on. Linux installed cleanly (after applying canek's two-step procedure for profile setting). With my laptop I got a windows 8.1 recovery/installation flash drive. I installed 8.1 (trivial) and then the trouble began. 8.1 is a *very* different interface. I couldn't even find logout. Also the version sent is buggy. I don't remember how I eventually exited. After that the system wouldn't boot from the hard drive even after I re-executed grub2-install and fdisk (both from the arch linux flash drive). A couple tips: The menu in Windows 8.1 is truly buggered. Easiest way to shut down is use Ctrl+Alt+Del, there'll be a power button at either the top right or lower right of the screen. If you use the Windows Key+X it shows an *actual* menu with useful shortcuts. Dan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sat, 25 Jul 2015 09:09:57 -0400, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: PS I checked and the gentoo installation guide says that gpt without uefi prevents dual booting windows. So the answer to the question of why are you using a 1980s partition table is that you want to use a 1990s operating system on it? ;-) When you said a new install, I assumed it was a newer computer, but if you don't have UEFI and want Windows you are apparently stuck with MBR. -- Neil Bothwick And then Adam said, What's a headache? pgpGUN2YRNLXt.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Project:Installer
On 18/07/15 03:25, James wrote: From [1] we have Project:Installer [2] which looks very interesting. However, If I were to create a new gentoo installer, I think I'd leverage ansible and the persistence mode (usb stick) code that LikeWhoa put together, as a basis for the effort. I'd be most curious to read other folk's ideas (strategies) to create a more automated installation semantic for installing gentoo systems. The handbook is fine; in fact it is great. But, many gentoo users that have performed more than a dozen gentoo installs sooner or later get around to their own installations customizations for a wide variety of valid reasons. Ansible would lend itself to expanded and very targeted types of system installs where an accomplished gentoo user could supplement the base install with a collection of specific packages and config settings; imho. Say for example a secure web or mail server, not that it would be the only way to build such a server, but just one specific method a particular author wanted to (share) publish. Surely there are other and better ideas that folks have used or that they are currently contemplating for routine gentoo installs? Maybe some discussion herein could help shape the efforts of [2,3]? Naturally, we should remember Release Engineering and their role as pivotal [3]. [1 and 2] are interesting to read. James [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Gentoo [2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Installer [3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:RelEng_GRS I used to install and look after OpenSuse Desk and Laptops until systemd showed it's ugly face. Now I install and look after several Gentoo Xfce desktops and 3 OpenSuse Xfce Laptops. I use a Cut Paste script to install Gentoo on Desktops. The only manual parts are booting a Gentoo USB stick, modifying hostname, ip address, user names and partitioning. When completed. Wen done, log in as user and set up email accounts and various eye candy. OpenSuse install on laptop involves booting of a installation USB stick, select Xfce Desktop, manually enter time zone, user name, counry, hostname, ip address, Samba, login as user and and set up email accounts and various eye candy. I am to stupid to install and get Gentoo to work on Laptops. My dream would be to have the OpensSuse Yast installer and administration gui to install, configure and maintain Gentoo on Desktops and Laptops. This should be easy for a programmer whois familiar with Ruby and C. The Yast installer and administration gui's are nothing more than gui interfaced to various command line utilities.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
/dev/vg7/opt/optext4relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/atom /mnt/atom ext4relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/atomresc /mnt/atomresc ext4relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/tpad /mnt/tpad ext4relatime,discard 1 2 xOn Sunday 26 July 2015 14:08:29 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 13:39:13 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: And this Armari box is five years old or more and still perfectly capable since I replaced the disks with SSDs this year. That's when I would have changed [away from MBR] Actually I did have a bit of a fling with btrfs at that time, but I couldn't understand what the docs were telling me. I must have had a comprehension gap or something, but in the end I just went back to what I knew and reinstalled from backups. The BIOS is still in the MBR era anyway. Not wishing to hijack the thread, but out of interest, what would you recommend for this box with its old BIOS, and two SSDs with LVM2 volumes? At present I have this fstab: /dev/md1 /boot ext2 relatime,noauto 1 2 /dev/md5 / ext4 relatime,discard 1 1 /dev/vg7/home /home ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/common/home/prh/common ext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/boinc /home/prh/boincext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/virt /home/prh/.VirtualBox ext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/var /var ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/portage /usr/portage ext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/packages /usr/portage/packages ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/distfiles /usr/portage/distfiles ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/local /usr/local ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/tmp /tmp ext2 relatime,nosuid,nodev,noexec 1 2 /dev/vg7/vartmp/var/tmp/ ext4 relatime,discard,nosuid,nodev 1 2 I've omitted quite a few other partitions that don't bear on my question. /dev/vg7 is on /dev/md7. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
2015-07-26 8:38 GMT-06:00 gottl...@nyu.edu: My son wanted me to do that. I didn't because Something else to learn (I don't run a vm). I didn't want to face dell support with linux and xen underneath the supported windows. That's an exaggeration, VirtualBox is just a few clicks and you get a VM, really easy and intuitive, common is what almost(even clueless people about computers) every noob uses, you should be able to have no problem with it if you are capable of dealing with gentoo. you don't need to do a cluster setup to run a vm.
[gentoo-user] Re: Project:Installer
wabenbau at gmail.com writes: I used to install and look after OpenSuse Desk and Laptops until systemd showed it's ugly face. Now I install and look after several Gentoo Xfce desktops and 3 OpenSuse Xfce Laptops. I use a Cut Paste script to install Gentoo on Desktops. The only manual parts are booting a Gentoo USB stick, modifying hostname, ip address, user names and partitioning. When completed. Wen done, log in as user and set up email accounts and various eye candy. Sounds reasonable. Wouldn't it be great if that was an automated semantic we could all use? OpenSuse install on laptop involves booting of a installation USB stick, select Xfce Desktop, manually enter time zone, user name, counry, hostname, ip address, Samba, login as user and and set up email accounts and various eye candy. I am to stupid to install and get Gentoo to work on Laptops. Um, I disagree. The disk/bios/bootstrap issues are perverted by the manufacturers, particularly on laptops, tablets and embedded devices as to soot their business goals; hence on a laptop the preventative issues are magnified. You are not alone in this struggle. My dream would be to have the OpensSuse Yast installer and administration gui to install, configure and maintain Gentoo on Desktops and Laptops. This should be easy for a programmer whois familiar with Ruby and C. The Yast installer and administration gui's are nothing more than gui interfaced to various command line utilities. If it works, I'd use it, regardless of Yast. Maybe we can find a person that knows Yast (Ruby and such) to hire to write a similar installer for GEntoo? I'm not against hiring the right person to write a gentoo installer:: as long as I get a BTRFS raid 1 base system out of it. DONE DEAL! If anyone is interested, just drop me some private email. It has to open sourced. Yast was one of the reasons why I switched from SUSE to gentoo in 2003. IIRC one problem with Yast was that it used it's own configuration files and not the standard upstream configuration files of the installed packages. This sometimes made the manual configuration of packages very difficult for me, because the original package documentation refers to config files that I could not found on my SUSE system. Another caveat was that if one of the Yast config files was altered by hand, it was not possible to configure this file with Yast anymore. Of course in the beginning of my Linux experience (SuSE 4.2) I was happy that there was Yast because I came from OS/2 and it was a nightmare for me to configure Linux the first time, even with Yast. Without Yast I maybe would not use Linux today. Maybe Yast is better today, but in the past it was sometimes very frustrating. OK, so we need an expert here. Any takers? Make a few dollars and get famous for writing (hacking) a gentoo installer for the gentoo-commoners? Anyone? James
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, Jul 26 2015, Mick wrote: On Sunday 26 Jul 2015 17:06:11 Jc García wrote: 2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net: I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W support stuff runs in a VM. The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't dealt with DELL hardware. BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at call centers). Dell support are *very* good at selling you extended warranty, which is not worth what you're paying for. Unless you are majorly unlucky - i.e. MoBo blows up. I cannot defend dell's pricing for support. I recently spoke to people at dell pro support who know much more about windows than I do (or want to). I admit this is a lowj bar. A number of years ago I had a hardware problem. They gave me some windows commands to run and when I reported the results they shipped the part. Perhaps someone came to install it or I did. I don't remember. Another time the laptop motherboard went bad. I don't think this required diagnostics. Someone came and replaced the board. allan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
* Jc García jyo.gar...@gmail.com [150726 11:28]: 2015-07-26 8:38 GMT-06:00 gottl...@nyu.edu: My son wanted me to do that. I didn't because Something else to learn (I don't run a vm). I didn't want to face dell support with linux and xen underneath the supported windows. That's an exaggeration, VirtualBox is just a few clicks and you get a VM, really easy and intuitive, common is what almost(even clueless people about computers) every noob uses, you should be able to have no problem with it if you are capable of dealing with gentoo. you don't need to do a cluster setup to run a vm. I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W support stuff runs in a VM. In the past when I get machine with Windows pre-installed I usually shrink the Windows partition and then install linux in that space (generally plenty of disk) if I need to keep Windows around for some reason (sometimes just because it's a work machine that has Windows requirements at times.) It's definitely much better to have Windows installed first and then Linux as Windows is poorly behaved and treats the entire disk as its own touching things it has no business to touch. Todd
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Project:Installer
Hans li...@interworld.net.au wrote: On 18/07/15 03:25, James wrote: From [1] we have Project:Installer [2] which looks very interesting. However, If I were to create a new gentoo installer, I think I'd leverage ansible and the persistence mode (usb stick) code that LikeWhoa put together, as a basis for the effort. I'd be most curious to read other folk's ideas (strategies) to create a more automated installation semantic for installing gentoo systems. The handbook is fine; in fact it is great. But, many gentoo users that have performed more than a dozen gentoo installs sooner or later get around to their own installations customizations for a wide variety of valid reasons. Ansible would lend itself to expanded and very targeted types of system installs where an accomplished gentoo user could supplement the base install with a collection of specific packages and config settings; imho. Say for example a secure web or mail server, not that it would be the only way to build such a server, but just one specific method a particular author wanted to (share) publish. Surely there are other and better ideas that folks have used or that they are currently contemplating for routine gentoo installs? Maybe some discussion herein could help shape the efforts of [2,3]? Naturally, we should remember Release Engineering and their role as pivotal [3]. [1 and 2] are interesting to read. James [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Gentoo [2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Installer [3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:RelEng_GRS I used to install and look after OpenSuse Desk and Laptops until systemd showed it's ugly face. Now I install and look after several Gentoo Xfce desktops and 3 OpenSuse Xfce Laptops. I use a Cut Paste script to install Gentoo on Desktops. The only manual parts are booting a Gentoo USB stick, modifying hostname, ip address, user names and partitioning. When completed. Wen done, log in as user and set up email accounts and various eye candy. OpenSuse install on laptop involves booting of a installation USB stick, select Xfce Desktop, manually enter time zone, user name, counry, hostname, ip address, Samba, login as user and and set up email accounts and various eye candy. I am to stupid to install and get Gentoo to work on Laptops. My dream would be to have the OpensSuse Yast installer and administration gui to install, configure and maintain Gentoo on Desktops and Laptops. This should be easy for a programmer whois familiar with Ruby and C. The Yast installer and administration gui's are nothing more than gui interfaced to various command line utilities. Yast was one of the reasons why I switched from SUSE to gentoo in 2003. IIRC one problem with Yast was that it used it's own configuration files and not the standard upstream configuration files of the installed packages. This sometimes made the manual configuration of packages very difficult for me, because the original package documentation refers to config files that I could not found on my SUSE system. Another caveat was that if one of the Yast config files was altered by hand, it was not possible to configure this file with Yast anymore. Of course in the beginning of my Linux experience (SuSE 4.2) I was happy that there was Yast because I came from OS/2 and it was a nightmare for me to configure Linux the first time, even with Yast. Without Yast I maybe would not use Linux today. Maybe Yast is better today, but in the past it was sometimes very frustrating. -- Regards wabe
[gentoo-user] Re: Project:Installer
Bruce Schultz brulzki at gmail.com writes: Matthew Marchese maffblas...@gentoo.org writes: I see that you've found stager. I'd like you to share your thoughts on what a perfect installer Gentoo could do. A successful gentoo installer will: Be multi-faceted so that many different, but common installation outcomes are not only possible, but are automated to the point of extreme convenience for folks to use them, as they choose. Let's face it no matter what we do, most noobs will not use Gentoo. But, those folks with some level of experience and competence will use gentoo; many more if there is an automated (base)installation. After all, when google or others corporations install and use gentoo, do you think they have folks spend 1-2 days using the handbook? NO, their gentoo(derivative) has an automated installation. So a base-installer for your [category 1] is the most important part. So in that train of thought, WE, should parse out all of the good parts of many different installers and installation schemes, as a part of the research and leverage as to what exists that can be leveraged or emulated, Debian included. OpenSuse has (13.2) has a slick install that allows for btrfs without lvm or mdadm. That was the default pathway. I've read that you can end up with a full raid install if you choose the advanced pathway. I'm still researching that one. Then there is 'Calculate Linux' that more than one gentoo dev uses routinely to install Gentoo. There are many pathways to streamline the installation of Gentoo. Many, for onerous reasons believe that is a bad idea. There is plenty of existing installation code that sets up MBR and ext*; so that's a no brainer on how to do that. Newer technologies, like btrfs are tricky. In my opinion, there's really 3 parts to the install process, and I think it helps to distinguish between them. I think a complete installer program has to address all 3, but each task could be modularised. 1. The low level decisions, like disk partitioning, raid and disk mirroring, filesystem choices like ext4, btrfs, zfs, or some other. For a VM, the choices here might include creating a new LVM volume or btrfs subvolume Gentoo is not going to formally support ZFS as has been stated before. However supporting ZFS by others is well documented and some maverick could easily extend the gentoo-base installer for a target system (after your Category-1) where ZFS is installed. Just not officially gentoo. 2. Installing system files, which is not much more than untaring the stage3, and low level system configuration of make.conf settings, choice of profile, locale timezone settings, users passwords, networking, choice of syslog from, etc Category-2 This is a pretty easy part to automate. Many have stated that all of this information could be gathered up before the actual installation (batched) begins and parsed out at the appropriate time during the actually (automated) installation. All of Category 1 as well as some parts of Category-2 are what I refer to as the base-install. After that point is when you make key decisions like workstation vs server vs embedded vs tablet. 3. Higher level system configuration to get to a finalised state This is the part of the traditional Gentoo handbook I do agree with. This is the part of the installation where noobs begin to actually learn gentoo, or at least those parts necessary for routine administration and usage. This is part of the handbook that is trivial for experience *nix folks as most are familiar with more than one package manager or software installation semantic. Most of these sorts of noobs (folks that struggle with maintaining a *nix system) are never going to profile low level kernel code or compare one file system against another, so why make it mandatory to master category 1 in order to install, use and enjoy gentoo? Currently, the lack of a gentoo installer is exactly that:: a blocker to noobs. That's not my issue:: the devs are using 'mis-direction' here to prohibit the creation of a slick-smooth-unattended-useful base-install semantic for those with moderate *nix skills, imho. YMMV. That's my issue. Dont belive me? Just go to gentoo-dev and read the flack that MaffBlaster caught on the list, merely for discussion a new installation semantic. Hence the focus on 'stage-4' install code.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sunday 26 Jul 2015 17:06:11 Jc García wrote: 2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net: I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W support stuff runs in a VM. The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't dealt with DELL hardware. BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at call centers). Dell support are *very* good at selling you extended warranty, which is not worth what you're paying for. Unless you are majorly unlucky - i.e. MoBo blows up. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On 26/07/2015 18:06, Jc García wrote: 2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net: I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W support stuff runs in a VM. The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't dealt with DELL hardware. BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at call centers). Is that Alan as in me? I agree with you, getting call-centre people to help resolve a computer issue usually doesn't help much. In a few cases I have had proper help to find the magic undocumented keystroke on boot that does some useful function. My proper experience with call-centres has always been on corporate accounts though, the ones with 5-year next-day or 3-hour warranties. These are very different from phone-a-number-and-go-to-New-Delhi. With these accounts, there is no fooling around, no messing about with switching it off and on again, you describe the symptom, detail the tests done and because these are usually valid a replacement part ends up on it's way to arrive next day. This happens because the respective corporate overlords signed SLA contracts that says it will happen this way. In that sort of setup, Dell and HP both give very very good support. I've heard anecdotes from others that IBM does too. These big bys take their SLAs with other big customers very seriously, no-one can afford to annoy bug customers. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
2015-07-26 14:55 GMT-06:00 Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: Is that Alan as in me? No, I should have written Allan, I didn't notice the 'll' also as he was the original poster and I didn't see any post from others with same name I omitted the last name. Interesting experience you share anyway, of course I was referring to the support you get for laptop as a regular PC user, not enterprise grade.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, Jul 26 2015, Mick wrote: On Sunday 26 Jul 2015 15:35:15 gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: The system came with windows 7 on the whole disk 500GB. To shrink it to 50 takes work as there are unmovable files in the middle (the are there since you must actually moved them). Anyway I didn't try but simply removed the big partition (I left the dell partition and the windows recovery partition). I then installed linux (an error) leaving a partition for windows. OK, this is your problem: Thank you for the clear explanation below! The Dell partition is a FAT partition, in which Dell installs some recovery utilities which we do not need for now. The Windows Recovery partition is the NTFS boot partition for the MSWindows OS, which itself resides in the (originally) 3rd large NTFS partition. In the 2nd partition you should find a ./Boot/BCD file, which is the MSWindows boot manager. When you look at it with BCDedit you will find the kernel entry which loads the OS from the 3rd partition. You will notice that the 3rd partition is specified as a UUID and this is what is causing your problem. If you change the 3rd partition either in size, or in position, you *must* obtain its new UUID and edit the BCD file with this new string, before your system is able to boot again. I knew it was better to install windows first but did not have the correct reason. OK (by luck) I seem to be doing it right this time. I used the purchased flash drive containing 8.1 to remove all but the dell partition. I then had the windows installer make a 50GB second partition and install windows there. It made a small second partition and installed 8.1 on the big remaining third. I was able to turn on / login / logout / halt (my basic use of windows) and am back to installing linux part time (I have family activities on weekends). Thanks again. allan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
* Jc García jyo.gar...@gmail.com [150726 12:06]: 2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net: I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W support stuff runs in a VM. The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't dealt with DELL hardware. It works OK sometimes with USB but I've had problems getting even USB disks to be seen by the VM and forget it when the USB devices change a lot dynamically. It doesn't work at all in an environment like that. And I use it with state of the art machines. Recent quad core i7 machines with plenty of memory and using processor virtualization features. Not just Dell machines. And on server machines we've had to move off VirtualBox due to performance issues. I'm not knocking VirtualBox. I love it and continue to use it whenever I can. But there are still cases where a native boot is needed for me. BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at call centers). In the times I've had to deal with support it's usually about doing what they ask so they finally believe that it's a hardware problem and will generate the needed RMA # to get replacements. Sometimes that's running Dell Diagnostics and sometimes it's just running through something they know how to do in Windows so they're convinced.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, Jul 26 2015, Todd Goodman wrote: In the times I've had to deal with support it's usually about doing what they ask so they finally believe that it's a hardware problem and will generate the needed RMA # to get replacements. Sometimes that's running Dell Diagnostics and sometimes it's just running through something they know how to do in Windows so they're convinced. My experience as well. allan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net: I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W support stuff runs in a VM. The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't dealt with DELL hardware. BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at call centers).
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 15:14:46 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: Actually I did have a bit of a fling with btrfs at that time, but I couldn't understand what the docs were telling me. I must have had a comprehension gap or something, but in the end I just went back to what I knew and reinstalled from backups. The BIOS is still in the MBR era anyway. Not wishing to hijack the thread, Too late :) but out of interest, what would you recommend for this box with its old BIOS, and two SSDs with LVM2 volumes? At present I have this fstab: /dev/md1 /boot ext2 relatime,noauto 1 2 /dev/md5 / ext4 relatime,discard 1 1 /dev/vg7/home /home ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/common/home/prh/common ext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/boinc /home/prh/boincext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/virt /home/prh/.VirtualBox ext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/var /var ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/portage /usr/portage ext4 relatime,discard 1 3 /dev/vg7/packages /usr/portage/packages ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/distfiles /usr/portage/distfiles ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/local /usr/local ext4 relatime,discard 1 2 /dev/vg7/tmp /tmp ext2 relatime,nosuid,nodev,noexec 1 2 /dev/vg7/vartmp/var/tmp/ ext4 relatime,discard,nosuid,nodev 1 2 I've omitted quite a few other partitions that don't bear on my question. /dev/vg7 is on /dev/md7. Are the 2 SSDs in a RAID? If so, I'd give btrfs RAID a try, you just need to get your hear round the concepts of volumes and sub-volumes. Before using btrfs for real, I created a couple of loopback disk files to play around with the options. You couuld probably switch over with minimal downtime by failing one of the SSDs and removing it from the RAID. Create a single device btrfs filesystem on it and copy the data over. Once you are happy with it, add the other disk and convert to RAID1. -- Neil Bothwick I'm Not Sure If I'm Homosexual, Said Tom, Half In Earnest.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, 26 Jul 2015 10:16:45 -0400, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: When you said a new install, I assumed it was a newer computer, but if you don't have UEFI and want Windows you are apparently stuck with MBR. It does have UEFI and perhaps I should have learned how to use it. I understand that while gpt is easy to use uefi takes some effort to learn. That's a pretty fair summation. Using GRUB with UEFI can be a bit of an initiation. bootlctl from systemd, or its predecessor gummiboot, is much simpler. -- Neil Bothwick Top Oxymorons Number 1: Microsoft Works
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
N one is forcing you (unless you have a UEFI board), and more than anyone is telling you not to use a 2.4 series kernel. Neil Bothwick This brings a question to mind: Does anybody know what Linux kernel was the first to support GPT? Slackware 13.0, released in 2009 with kernel 2.6.29.6, did not support GPT, could not read the SATA hard drive on the rare occasions when it booted from its new home, IDE hard drive inside USB 2.0 enclosure. NetBSD (3.0) and FreeBSD (7.0) got GPT support long before 2009. Regarding problems dealing with Dell as discussed in this thread, I prefer to buy parts and build my computer. That way I get more choice, more up-to-date hardware, and more intimate knowledge of what's inside. One possibility for installing MS-Windows in this case is getting a low-price refurbished small SATA hard drive, and installing Linux, and FreeBSD, NetBSD, Haiku, if desired, on a bigger hard drive. Today's UEFI permits selecting boot device, and no more slave and master issues such as plagued IDE hard drives. Still, there might be the risk that the Windows installer might see the other hard drives and do some nasty things. Tom
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, Jul 26 2015, Jc García wrote: 2015-07-26 14:55 GMT-06:00 Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com: Is that Alan as in me? No, I should have written Allan, I didn't notice the 'll' also as he was the original poster and I didn't see any post from others with same name I omitted the last name. Interesting experience you share anyway, of course I was referring to the support you get for laptop as a regular PC user, not enterprise grade. You are right the gap is large. I was happy with the service I got so bought one of our boys a consumer dell laptop. He eventually needed service and I called dell for him (as an ordinary consumer). It was a horror show. allan
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sunday 26 Jul 2015 15:35:15 gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: The system came with windows 7 on the whole disk 500GB. To shrink it to 50 takes work as there are unmovable files in the middle (the are there since you must actually moved them). Anyway I didn't try but simply removed the big partition (I left the dell partition and the windows recovery partition). I then installed linux (an error) leaving a partition for windows. OK, this is your problem: The Dell partition is a FAT partition, in which Dell installs some recovery utilities which we do not need for now. The Windows Recovery partition is the NTFS boot partition for the MSWindows OS, which itself resides in the (originally) 3rd large NTFS partition. In the 2nd partition you should find a ./Boot/BCD file, which is the MSWindows boot manager. When you look at it with BCDedit you will find the kernel entry which loads the OS from the 3rd partition. You will notice that the 3rd partition is specified as a UUID and this is what is causing your problem. If you change the 3rd partition either in size, or in position, you *must* obtain its new UUID and edit the BCD file with this new string, before your system is able to boot again. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] gru2-mkconfig tries to read the extended partition ??
On Sun, Jul 26 2015, Daniel Frey wrote: On 07/26/2015 07:35 AM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: The system came with windows 7 on the whole disk 500GB. To shrink it to 50 takes work as there are unmovable files in the middle (the are there since you must actually moved them). Anyway I didn't try but simply removed the big partition (I left the dell partition and the windows recovery partition). I then installed linux (an error) leaving a partition for windows. Now I can't go and look back on the thread as I've deleted some messages... is this a new laptop with an UEFI BIOS? If that's the case you must use GPT with UEFI while booting Windows, and make sure Secure Boot is off in the BIOS settings if you want to use linux. I am not sure if Windows will boot if it was installed with Secure Boot on. The system does have a uefi bios but I am using the old mbr interface as I (perhaps mistakenly) thought it would be harder to learn uefi than to deal with the clunky but known mbr interface With my laptop I got a windows 8.1 recovery/installation flash drive. I installed 8.1 (trivial) and then the trouble began. 8.1 is a *very* different interface. I couldn't even find logout. Also the version sent is buggy. I don't remember how I eventually exited. After that the system wouldn't boot from the hard drive even after I re-executed grub2-install and fdisk (both from the arch linux flash drive). A couple tips: The menu in Windows 8.1 is truly buggered. Easiest way to shut down is use Ctrl+Alt+Del, there'll be a power button at either the top right or lower right of the screen. If you use the Windows Key+X it shows an *actual* menu with useful shortcuts. Thanks for these. Dell told me some tips as well. I can successfully boot / login / logoff / halt which is all I expect to use. I dual boot windows just for the convenience of dell support. If I have need for their help (I hope not) I just call and do what they say. thanks again, allan
