Bug#268554: weirdness trying to use existing efi partitions on ia64
On Friday 27 August 2004 19:31, Joey Hess wrote:
> Package: partman-efi
> Severity: normal
> Tags: d-i
>
> I have an efi partition already from a previous, failed install.
> Partman sees it and shows the type as "EFI boot partition". It seems
> to be activated in partman, but on exit partman-efi complains that I
> have no efi boot partition.
>
> I've tried deleting the partition and re-making it, which works, but
> only if I slightly change the size. Apparently otherwise partman
> noticed I've not really changed anything, and does not format it.
> Unlike when it's dealing with other pre-existing partitions, partman
> does not add a "Format the partition: yes/no" to the partition edit
> menu, so I cannot force it to format it. Anyway, I'd rather not have
> to, as I hope to have multiple debian installs on this machine
> eventually.
>
> So to sum up, partman should let me control whether to format an
> existing efi partition or not, and partman-efi should not complain if
> the efi partition already exists and was previously formatted, or
> should perhaps complain less strenuously, since I suppose using an
> efi partition that has other cruft on it might be unsafe.
This seems to be caused by the core of partman that becomes convinced
that it should "keep" the partition. At that point, none of the methods
in partman-efi get called, making it somewhat difficult to add code
there to do otherwise. There must be some magic in the partman core
that I just don't grok yet but when partman gets convinced that either
it doesn't have to format because you aren't going mount it (which
we don't) or it hasn't been changed by your choices at some point,
it sets the method to "keep" and that is that. Suggestions or
review by others would be welcome.
As for an efi partition with cruft in it, elilo-installer cleans that
out so it is not unsafe. According to elilo docs, the options used
won't carry across any previous state. In other words, the "problem"
would not be carrying forward old cruft but potentially removing
good stuff you may want. Safest path: expect a re-format which
--
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Jim Lieb Wild Open Source Inc.
lieb@wildopensource.com Cell: 831.295.9317
Office: 831.421.0883 Fax: 831.421.0885
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