Re: Problem with Knoppix 6.2 18-11-2009's 0wn

[Erik Auerswald <auerswal@unix-ag.uni-kl.de>]

Hi Marcos,

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 10:59:21PM +0000, Marcos Torres Marado wrote:
> The HDD install of the latest version of Knoppix wasn't working for me:
> my scenario was a "I want to create the partitions myself and then you'll
> see I have what's needed to install". Besides many other partitions,
> I created (with gparted) a swap and a free (and big enough) reiserfs
> partition. Yet, 0wn (the installer) kept telling me I didn't have what
> is needed to make an installation.

Yes, this is a limitation introduced when switching from ext3 to reiserfs
in 0wn. If you manually create a reiserfs partition you have to mount
it once in rw mode to fully initialize it.

> Checking the logs, I found out that
> there was a "mount" failing. After looking at the code, I found out that
> it was happening (in my case) twice in the code. Here's how I've fixed it
> (sorry for not providing a diff):
>
> at /usr/share/0wn/0wn-partitioning :
> 
> 1) on check_partition_empty(), change 
> - blockdev --setro "$1"
> to
> + blockdev --setrw "$1" 
> 
> 2) on check_partition_big_enough(), change 
> - blockdev --setro "$1"
> to
> + blockdev --setrw "$1" 
> 
> I'm confident that this is *not* the right way to fix the problem, but
> it surely was how I worked around the issue and now have a machine with
> Knoppix being installed :-)

You are right that this is no acceptable fix, because
check_partition_empty() must not change the partition
(as much as this is possible at all).

The real fix could be something like that:
1) save partitions before manual partitioning
2) check for new reiserfs partitions
3) try to mount them rw, iff ro mount failed

Best regards,
Erik
-- 
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