Mailing List Archive

At my former job I had written up some documentation on wireless. Wireless
Theory, for example. I'd be happy to share my documents with you, if you'd
like

Jonathan Rocker


On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 4:24 AM, wireless <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

> Well I've been noodling around quite a lot
> with all sorts of installs. I like the Grub2(section 10)
> and GPT(Section 4) inlays in the handbook. But, you might
> consider using gptfdisk (gdisk) in the handbook
> in lieu of fdisk or in addition to fdisk for
> gpt setups. It's already on the minimal install iso
> (sys-apps/gptfdisk-0.8.6), and works fine from the
> command line.....
>
>
> Just a thought.
>
> hth,
> James
>
>

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 11:24:15PM -0500, wireless wrote:
> Well I've been noodling around quite a lot
> with all sorts of installs. I like the Grub2(section 10)
> and GPT(Section 4) inlays in the handbook. But, you might
> consider using gptfdisk (gdisk) in the handbook
> in lieu of fdisk or in addition to fdisk for
> gpt setups. It's already on the minimal install iso
> (sys-apps/gptfdisk-0.8.6), and works fine from the
> command line.....

There are many partitioning tools "out there". I wouldn't mind adding info
on it, but on the other hand I've been noticing that the installation
instructions are getting more and more cluttered due to the set of "choices"
users have.

Users are of course free to use the partitioning tool they like. For GPT
partitions, we currently only document "parted" - is this not sufficient?
Would gptfdisk be needed in certain cases?

Wkr,
Sven Vermeulen

On 01/19/14 14:41, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 11:24:15PM -0500, wireless wrote:
>> Well I've been noodling around quite a lot
>> with all sorts of installs. I like the Grub2(section 10)
>> and GPT(Section 4) inlays in the handbook. But, you might
>> consider using gptfdisk (gdisk) in the handbook
>> in lieu of fdisk or in addition to fdisk for
>> gpt setups. It's already on the minimal install iso
>> (sys-apps/gptfdisk-0.8.6), and works fine from the
>> command line.....

> There are many partitioning tools "out there". I wouldn't mind adding info
> on it, but on the other hand I've been noticing that the installation
> instructions are getting more and more cluttered due to the set of "choices"
> users have.

Well, I agree with this clutter assessment. Rather than the current
layout, it would be great if only the default (minimal) instructions
first appeared in the handbook. The additional options or choices, could
be viewed if the titlebar is "cliqued to expand" these alternate views.
I'm not sure the current handbook can do that, or if it has to wait on
new (wiki) features. Auto-jumping, via some mechanism or
via section numbers and subsection numbers in a more robust scheme,
is warranted too.

Another related issue with the flat appearance of the handbook,
is that there are 2 types of section numbers that cause confusion
if/when you need to jump from a given section to the next logical
section. Take section 10 for example. "10.b. Using GRUB2" is next
followed by "Code Listing 2.2: Installing ..." Furthermore One would
think that "10.a." - "10.e." are each options that you only choose one
of. But in fact "10.e." must (should) be followed regardless of the boot
system chosen (10 b -d). Reorganization and hiding (expanding) non
critical options would be keen, imho.

How this is achieved would very much depends on what mechanisms are
available for the current(future?) versions of the handbook (wiki?).


> Users are of course free to use the partitioning tool they like. For GPT
> partitions, we currently only document "parted" - is this not sufficient?
> Would gptfdisk be needed in certain cases?

Well, imho gptfdisk could replace fdisk? It auto handles disks larger
than 2T and supports many more features. This would not be for me to
decide; I'd feel better about other folks chiming in, who have actually
tried gptfdisk (gdisk), as it on the minimal install iso, before
replacing fdisk with gptfdisk.

It's an idea, that can be discussed, as fdisk is quite antiquated
and limited, imho.

James

wireless posted on Mon, 20 Jan 2014 23:24:31 -0500 as excerpted:

>> Users are of course free to use the partitioning tool they like. For
>> GPT partitions, we currently only document "parted" - is this not
>> sufficient?
>> Would gptfdisk be needed in certain cases?
>
> Well, imho gptfdisk could replace fdisk? It auto handles disks larger
> than 2T and supports many more features. This would not be for me to
> decide; I'd feel better about other folks chiming in, who have actually
> tried gptfdisk (gdisk), as it on the minimal install iso, before
> replacing fdisk with gptfdisk.
>
> It's an idea, that can be discussed, as fdisk is quite antiquated and
> limited, imho.

What I can say is that I've used gptfdisk/gdisk since before fdisk had gpt
support; it's the only thing I've used with gpt, and I haven't used
anything /but/ gpt since I switched over, some years ago now.

I heavily partition and use gpt (and thus gdisk) on everything from USB
sticks to multiple-identically-partitioned devices with either
(currently) multi-device btrfs or (older) mdraid on top, ssd and spinning
rust alike.

And gdisk and its in-package variants (cgdisk in particular, tho that was
introduced after I first started using gdisk) are what I have used to set
them all up, without issue so far. =:^)

The only reason I could think to continue using the old fdisk would be to
try to standardize on the same tool for both mbr and gpt partitioning.
And that I can't really comment on, since I've never used the newer fdisk
gpt functionality at all.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

On 01/15/14 17:49, Jon Rocker wrote:
> At my former job I had written up some documentation on wireless.
> Wireless Theory, for example. I'd be happy to share my documents with
> you, if you'd like
>
> Jonathan Rocker


Hello Jonathan,

Folks tend to dislike top posting, if you can avoid that. I believe that
most docs are moving to the wiki.gentoo.org site, so if you like, just
post your offering there with a note inviting others to "chime in" on
making it better and more useful.


One basic principle that I think would help our (gentoo) documentation
is to employ some sort of document hierarchy scheme, with the
various layers being either hyper-linked to other documents, or
expanded/contracted in a consistent (enfored?) semantic. The exact
mechanism(s) employed sould depend on what the folks that oversee the
wiki belief is a solid, consistent semantic. I am not qualified to get
deeply involved in those semantics, except as a consumer of the
resource. Personally, I'm more of a hardware guy, who stands tall
on the genius of the good software minded folks of gentoo.......


So my philosophy for the new gentoo wiki, would be to keep only the
most essential (stripped?) information at the highest level visible,
yet the details, theory and options are a click (or 2) away in
some form of "expanded/hyper-linked" view. With that in mind,
post/edit/add your offering on wiki.gentoo.org and drop us a line.....?


Also, remember, gentoo is a very classy organization, where sincerity
and honesty are paramount. We each have knowledge that may be sensitive
to former employers and/or clients; so please do not offer up anything
that is the "bonafide" Intellectual Property of others, as a general
guideline.


hth,
James