Re: Further to my installation error
On Wed 16 Mar 2016 at 14:49:44 (+0300), Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Mar 2016 22:41:14 +0000 Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > So - if you want to format an existing partition properly, so the
> > stuff on it actually goes, use Gparted not the partitioner in the
> > Jessie installer. Sad.
I can't see why Lisi came to that conclusion from what she reported
here.
> Is it possible for the d-i partitioning utility to sometimes make
> mistakes when creating a new FS (I have only observed this with ext4,
> if it even happened at all and was not a product of my imagination) and
> somehow leave files from the old FS in the new over-riding FS if the
> two are in the same partition?
>
> Sometimes after over-writing an old ext4 partition with a new ext4
> partition of the same size and location, mysterious files have appeared
> in the new FS which should not exist, but existed in the previous
> instance; "ghost files" if you will.
It's far more likely that you forgot to format the partition, if
that's indeed what you wanted to do.
"over-writing an old ext4 partition with a new ext4 partition of the
same size and location" is exactly what one does if the partition table
gets mangled. People who do that will then cross their fingers and
hope that *all* the pre-existing files reappear. They're not "ghost"
files; they're the actual files which should be untouched by
repartitioning.
Some people really can't get on with the d-i partitioner/formatter.
At least in its curses mode, it's not the easiest interface. (I've
never tried the graphical version.) And I admit that I prefer using
familiar tools to set up my disks before installing, but that's as
much about making sure that everything I want is well backed-up first.
I don't like gparted either. Give me cfdisk for MSDOS-style and gdisk
(ie GPT fdisk) for GPT-style.
Cheers,
David.
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