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Subject9G disk, >4 partitions, and lose95
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And lo, Gerhard Mack saith unto me:
>[attribution lost:]
> > With all due respect, Mr. Cox, your "average user" definition does need an
> > upgrade.
> >
> > Not all "average users" are nincompoops. I have seen many "average users"
> > successfully installed Windoze 95 on their machine themselves. They are not
> > "gurus" or "wizards" of any kind, and most of them don't know enough to code up
> > a working C or even Visual-Basic program.
> >
> > Ask the same "average users" to install Linux however, and most will throw up
> > their hands.
> >
> > The level of difficulty to install Windoze from scratch and that of installing
> > Linux is _not_ the same. It _does_ require a higher level of computer literacy
> > for a successful Linux installation (even with the RedHat's almost no-brain
> > installation process.)

I, with many years of Linux and DOS experience, and several installs of
Lose95 under my belt, went to install Linux AND lose95 on my new 9G Viking
II hard disk. Note the 9G part, and the "AND". It didn't disturb me
that my old fdisk didn't know what partition type FAT32 was, I had a
RH5.1 install whose fdisk did know. The bad part was that on such big
disks, lose95 (OSR2+USB) not only REQUIRED a funny partition type (0xf?)
for its "big extended partitions", but crashed on a regular basis when
I used Norton Disk Edit (booting DOS 5.0; linux fdisk won't let you
re-type a partition to 0x5) to change the partition type to 0x5, the usual
extended partition type number. Worse, lose95 fdisk wouldn't respect
half of my 2G linux /usr partition (which probably spanned the 1024
cylinder boundary, I'll admit; my Fireport 40 or Linux came up with a
32/64/~8500 geometry). In disgust, I wiped out my swap partition, made
new losedows root (500M, non-FAT32) and extended (6000M, fat-32 in big-
extended partition that Linux can't read yet) partitions, and put my
/usr partition as /dev/sda4.

In the process, I discovered how annoyingly lose95's fdisk likes to scan,
and re-scan, and re-scan the disk surface it just scanned when it made
the extended partition, before it's willing to risk putting a logical drive
inside that same extended partition...




> Hmmm ever try to install windows on a PnP machine ?
> Due to the number of cleanups and repairs I have done on windows boxes, I
> would have to agree with Alan, the average user is not capable of
> installing windows under anything but optimal conditions. (no more then 1
> PnP device) It's not that their stupid, it's just that the process looks
> easy, when it's not. It's the same reason I dislike windows look-alike
> bios interfaces, because once again it's deceptive, makes those hd setting
> look like a toy. I preferred it when it looked hard because then the
> users would at least ask first before playing with stuff. (saving me
> plenty of time that would be wasted fixing it)
Actually, I don't have any PnP devices which aren't PCI devices, but my
only glitch in '95 driver installation is that I have to provide drivers
for my Linksys "unknown PCI Ethernet card" (a "?" device) rather than
adding the Linksys drivers under the network devices or network setup.
When I try adding the net device and deleting the "?" device, it doesn't
get the right clues...


If anyone's already working on kernel support for lose95/98's "big"
extended partitions, please let me know, otherwse I'll start poking
around. It's starting to become a FAQ in the newsgroups (with no
good answers!), now that you can get a 9G SCSI drive for <$500 on a
good day, and a >8G IDE drive for less yet... I think we really,
really need this in 2.2, if not 2.2.0, otherwise there goes a good
chunk of our losedows non-combatibility...


Keith



--
"The avalanche has already started; |Linux: http://www.linuxhq.com |"Zooty,
it is too late for the pebbles to |KDE: http://www.kde.org | zoot
vote." Kosh, "Believers", Babylon 5 |Keith: kwrohrer@enteract.com | zoot!"
www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html |http://www.enteract.com/~kwrohrer | --Rebo

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