On Mar 16, 2012, at 12:54 PM, Adam Williamson wrote: >> > As far as the error message goes, it seems correctly written to me. It's > a generic error message which is displayed any time anaconda (and hence > parted) is unable to make any sense at all of a disk's layout. It > therefore *has* to be pretty generic, because it could be displayed in > many situations. (It *is* displayed if you install with a completely > unformatted disk connected, for instance). Except it's not even remotely a generic message. It's a very specific message saying the problem is due to one of three things, none of which are true. > It does in fact countenance the possibility that the three possibilities > it offers are not actually the case. That's what the "If not" at the > start of the second sentence means. What the message is telling you is > "this might just be a blank disk, but if you know it's not a blank disk, > if you continue with the installation, we're going to blow any data > that's on it away". Interpreting "if not" in this manner is linguistically clumsy at best. It's certainly obscure. Obscurity, and causing user confusion, is the hallmark of poor UI. >> So those are the facts. Next it's a question on how to improve the >> result, or at the very least not produce totally bogus error messages >> that don't tell the user what the problem really is, or how to fix it. > > I don't think it is a bogus message, for the reason cited above. > Remember to look at things from anaconda's point of view here. I could hardly care less what anaconda's point of view is. I care about the end user's point of view first. > The state anaconda is in when it posts this message is the state of > having given up on making any sense of what the hell is on the disk in > question. A state that Fedora/anaconda is responsible, in part, for having created in the first place by choosing to go with GPT on BIOS hardware; without a contingency for exactly the current situation. The state of this disk is such that no linux distro that depends on parted can install along side Windows. And there is no GUI method out of this situation without blowing away the other operating system. That's just crazy - I don't see how this can be defended as reasonable. > It has tried its hardest, but nothing doing. That's debatable. There exists a valid legacy MBR. The tool anaconda depends on for determining this is not only wrong, but appears to have no alternative behavior to honor the valid legacy MBR. That parted is brain dead in this situation doesn't absolve anaconda for having tried its hardest. There are other tools that can recognize and recover from this situation, they just aren't being used. > It now has the > option of just giving up and not installing, or proceeding to install by > blowing the disk away and starting from scratch. Given that it can > hardly modify a partition layout it does not understand, it's hard to > see what else anaconda can possibly do in this situation. Why list three specific things which are definitely not true, but fail to list (a coherent variation of) the parted error message, which suggests the disk previously used GPT but now uses MBR? Chris _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
