07 P<P0QQP0 2012, 16:31 P>Q Leonardo Sabino dos Santos <leonardo.sab...@gmail.com>: > I start answering the installer's questions. Keyboard layout. Root > password. Configuration of network interfaces. I'm not actually paying > a whole lot of attention to the questions as this is just a test > installation and I figure I can always explore and configure the > system later.
you can go paying a little attention when you do it for 101st time. when you're doing installation of a new OS for the first time, having you're sane, you're expected to pay attention. > Next, the disk stuff comes up. A lot of partition information appears > on the screen, followed by the question: > > Use (W)hole disk or (E)dit the MBR? [whole] > > At this point I'm actually trying to remember if there's a way to > scroll back the console, because some information has scrolled of the > screen. I try PageUp, PageDown, Ctrl-UpArrow, Ctrl-DownArrow, but > nothing works, so I press Enter. well, you know what? it is exactly the same key combination as it is in linux: Shift-PgUp / Shift-PgDn. even if it wasn't, you can interrupt the installation any time by pressing obvious ^C and start again, paying attention at the parts you missed earlier. > And my partition table is gone. Poof! Instantly, with no confirmation. > I immediately realized what had happened and rebooted. Too late. I got > a "No OS" message. It seems that the OpenBSD installer actually > overwrites the partition table the instant you press Enter. man, you're miserable! I remember when I installed OpenBSD 2.1 (if memory serves), in 1996 off twenty-something floppy disks. at that time README used to suggest having paper/pencil/calculator handy. at that time you needed to do calculations and know exactly what are those sectors, cylinders, heads. it was even better if you had knowledge about hard disk partitioning and all that stuff. i knew that stuff, i printed and carefully read README.i386 few times, i had all those things handy and yet on my first install I f*cked up my disk having my Windows for workgroups 3.11 disk suffer lost directories and files, along with broken file content. i never complained about it, i did my homework and did proper installation. these days you're relieved of these things. installation procedure is condensed, fdisk is much better, disklabel editing goes without vi, you're asked just few question, but the main thing about OpenBSD remains unchanged: YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. if you don't, you're probably best off without going there. But being asked if you want to use the whole disk for OpenBSD, confirming that and expecting it not to overwrite the partition table? what kind of logic is that?
