nate <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In that case, you can explicitly delete these partitions or configure the > > install program to delete these partitions for you, rather than have the > > install program *automatically* delete them for you.
> looking at the kickstart docs(again never used it myself), there seems > to be an option to delete only linux partitions, so MSWin32 partitions > would be unaffected. That wasn't the problem, though. I didn't have any Windows partitions. It deleted Linux data partitions on disk dives uninvolved in the OS installation. > > Exactly. But my standard config is limited to the boot disk drive. In > > fact, I explicitly told Kickstart to *only* make partitions on the boot > > disk drive. It has no good reason to mess with the partition tables of > > disk drives that it is not putting partitions onto. > In your view yes, in my view no. No software should ever be designed to surprise the user in a disastrous fashion. Ever. And whether the user is surprised, should not hinge on some footnote in the documentation or on how someone might read a particular sentence. In fact, it shouldn't depend on reading any documentation on all. Like with the law, there is a "reasonable person" principle for good software design. If you were a reasonable person, and you gave your computer to another reasonable person, and you asked him to install an OS onto the boot drive, and you told him that it was okay to wipe your disk, the reasonable person would not go and intentionally wipe all your other disks on the computer too. Such a person would be an idiot -- not a reasonable person. In as much as it is feasible, software should behave the same way as us reasonable people. Any view counter to this view is wrong, regardless of whether someone may happen to hold such a counter view. Furthermore, there would never be any advantage to removing partitions on a disk drive uninvolved in the OS install. No software should ever behave in a way that has no advantage over othe more reasonable behaviors. > Just seeing the words "Remove all existing partitions", immediately > meant to me, it will remove every partition on the system(hence the > 'all'). And again, I've never used kickstart so thats a view from an > outsider(though I have used solaris jumpstart). I do admit though the > documentation should be improved to make this information more clear. There's nothing wrong with the documentation. The problem is with the way the software behaves. It should be modified to behave reasonably. It couldn't take more that two or three lines of code to make it do so. > Maybe they could also introduce another option "Remove partitions on > configured disks only". There's no need for such an option. That's how it should always behave. |>oug -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
