Re: bad experience with Suse 9.1 on Inspiron 8200

From: perfb (perfb_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/11/04 

Date: 11 Jul 2004 04:46:47 -0700

> > the parted bug evidently wasnt the issue
>
> There is *no* parted bug!

ok, technically, perhaps not. but the fact is there is an updated parted
file that Suse highly recommends downloading.
 
ime, if there is a fix, then there was a bug.

> The 'bug' (and it really isn't in any OS but
> Windows) is the Linux Kernel 2.6.x which returns partition table date
> normalized to LBA sectors and not the kludged CHS 'workaround' that M$
> uses to get past all the artificial limits that have been applied to
> hard disks since MS-DOS and the 'lazy' BIOS settings of AUTO in the hard
> disk setup instead of either LBA or actual CHS values. LBA has been
> around for *many* years now and there is *no* excuse for M$ to ignore it
> and insist on using it's crippled methods.

granted, but dual boot install is an advertised feature of Suse, which
happens not to work in this instance, for whatever reason, ergo, bug.

however true the case is from the developer's point of view that
it is an M$ bug, such technicalities are irrelevant to the end user.
M$ has many such workarounds of its own to correct for 3rd party
driver bugs as well, and if one of those workarounds failed
catastrophically, it would be an M$ bug, not a 3rd party bug.

> AFAIAC, this was a 'feature'
> and not a bug -- turn around is fair play: if you have a Linux box and
> then install Windows on it, you can no longer boot Linux, so it's only
> fair that if you have a Windows box and install Linux on it, Windows
> should no longer boot. :-)
>

granted, the Linux dual-boot option is a nice feature that Windows
does not have. But Windows doesn't need it, whereas Linux *requires*
it, practically speaking.

And if it doesnt work in some cases, whose problem
is it? And is not just an incidental nicety for Linux, it is a
practical *necessity* to have such a feature for Linux, for 90% or
so of the present Linux users. Maybe, one hopes, in a few more years,
this will not be so much the case.

Therefore, imho, the dual-boot is a *critical* feature,
which *must* work as robustly as possible.

Anyway, I am pretty impressed with how well it does in fact work.

> And it doesn't 'trash' data, just makes the partition table unreadable
> to Windows *if* the BIOS is set to AUTO instead of LBA. Linux can still
> read all the data, why can't Windows?

Because Linux has hosed the partition table. And not all BIOS'es allow
setting the LBA option, e.g. Dell Inspiron.

All data *can* be trashed, according to Suse's readme on the parted patch
download, if the LBA option is not available, as in my case, and
if the partition table recovery is not done precisely right,
then all data access could be irrecoverably
destroyed for both Linux and M$. Ergo *potential* catastrophic data loss
is a consequence of this bug.

anyway, fwiw, ftr, the whole parted "bug/feature" issue is moot for me,
as it turned out not to be my actual problem.

I still dont know what the real cause was
other than the Suse 9.1 install locking up with the hd on continuously,
right after downloading all the patches in the normal install process.
Then once I did the hard reset, it never booted past GRUB, and
I had to do a FIXMBR in XP recovery. Which, according to Suse, might
have trashed my hd *if* it was in fact the parted issue.

Once I recovered, I reinstalled Suse skipping the automatic
patch download step, and the install completed ok,
and dualboot now works.

Now M$ is that much closer to being a vestigial wart on my PC!

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