On 14/09/2007, Frank Ludolph <Frank.Ludolph at sun.com> wrote: > > Shawn Walker wrote: > On 14/09/2007, Dave Miner <Dave.Miner at sun.com> wrote: > > > Jan, > > With respect to the task list: > > > > [1] October release (only fresh install on x86 supported) > --------------------------------------------------------- > o removed dependency on pfinstall engine > > o Disk module > * support for creating VTOC label (slice configuration) within existing > Solaris2 partition > according to information received from orchestrator (user will be asked to > create fdisk Solaris2 partition before Installer is launched). It is > supposed > that at least two slices will be created (one for ZFS root pool, one for > swap). > > I think we could pretty easily include support for using the entire > disk, as "fdisk -B" essentially does what we'd need to allow that > option. It's a small thing, but means one less thing that has to be > disabled/modified in the GUI and one less step for users who are willing > to give us the whole disk. > > While you're on that topic, if the target disk only has one partition > (a Solaris partition), I would like to see the installer default to > "use whole disk" as it seems more logical to me. Is there any reason > to not do that? Especially if that single partition takes up all > available space? > > The original design called for always defaulting to "whole disk". The user > could switch to "partition". The setting persists if the user selects a > different disk in order that they could quickly review/find the disks and > their partitioning. When at least one person inadvertently wiped his Windows > partition because we defaulted to "whole disk" and didn't force him to think > about partitioning we switched the default to "partition". We considered > changing the setting based on the selected disk as you suggest but flipping > this setting as the user selects a different disk could be confusing. So we > left "partition" as the default. I'm not really happy with it as it is and > will give it some more thought, but that's why it is the way it is...
As I said, it is probably safe as long as we know the only partition is a Solaris partition and it uses the whole disk already. I tend to not like the fact that the partitioning is even exposed by default anyway. Almost every OS installer in recent years has started to take the approach of asking as few questions as possible and only showing you things like partitioning if you hit some advanced toggle. Nonetheless, I appreciate the background on this decision. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst binarycrusader at gmail.com - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. " --Donald Knuth
