[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Booting Debian/testing fails



On Sat, Feb 03, 2007 at 12:57:09AM -0500, Kevin Mark wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 08:40:02PM -0500, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > > > wouldn't consider a *N*X are doing so.  And they're not prepared.  
> > > 
> > > so in other words... its a good thing! 
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes.  It tells us that our documentation isn't up to their needs.
> > 
> > Doug.
> Well, I'd say that the value of 'their' has progressively been changing
> to be an ever more less expeirenced group of users.

Well, I've been using Linux for five years -- at least -- I've lost 
count -- with various distros (starting frome when slackware was just 
starting to be installed from CDROM instead of floppies), have settled 
on Debian, and are tempted by Gentoo.  I don't find the documentation up 
to *my* needs.  Or else maybe I stil don't know where to find it.

For example, where do you find details on why rescue mode, swapped hard 
drives (/dev/hda <-> /dev/hdc) when I asked it to start a shell in the 
context of my root partition but not when I asked it to start a shell in 
the installer context?  In fact running fdisk /dev/hda in the root 
context showed me a perfect partition table for /dev/hdc, except that 
all the partitions were labelled as being on /dev/hda.

Now I know the boot-loaders have provisions for swapping hard-drive 
letters.  But why were they invoked?

This is the kind of detail that needs to be documented.  And access to 
wource code is no longer a solution, even for experienced programmers -- 
there's just too much undocumented context for each piece of the 
hundred-million-odd lines of code that constitute Debian that that's 
only practical for specialists in the particular subsystem under 
investigation.

I've considered switching to Gentoo, because some of their advocates say 
their distribution is strong on documentation, but I suspect that they 
mey not be a lot better.

-- hendrik



Reply to: