Re: [Mondo-devel] Partitioning errors

[Neil S. <pa...@li...>]

begin quoting Hugo Rabson :
> Neil Schneider wrote:-
> > begin quoting Hugo Rabson :
> > > Type 'interactive' at boot-time. Edit the mountlist to suit
> > your needs.
> > > The editor should tell you if your partitions won't fit on
> > the disk(s).
> > > Then proceed to answer 'yes' to all the questions (do you want to
> > > partition and reformat; do you want to restore all your data; etc.).
> > >
> > > If your hard disk is lying about its maximum capacity then the
> > > partitions won't fit even though mondorestore thinks they will.
> > This is fine, I did pretty much what you suggested, and it
> > worked. However that doesn't answer my original question.
> 
> Your original question is erroneous because Mondo doesn't ever set a
> partition to use maximum size _unless_ there's not enough space left on the
> disk for the partition (with the specified size) to be created. So, really,
> you're asking the wrong question. A better question is, why isn't there
> enough space on your hard disk for the partitions in Mondo's mountlist?

Ah, but Redhat's disk druid does. I presumed, probably incorrectly that
mondo was reading this information from the meta data on the disk, and
using that to set the partition size.
 
> A possible answer is, yout hard disk is lying to you, re: its capacity, so
> when Mondo resizes the mountlist to max out your hard disks, it is going
> beyond its actual capacity (thanks to the lie told by your hard disk).

That's not the case here, at least. I'm backing up and restoring a pretty
dead stock Red Hat 9 system. It's not even run more than an hour or two
before running mondorescue and mondorestore. The hard drive is precisely
the same I'm backing up from, so there's not change.
 
> Let's say you have a 50GB hard disk which claims it will hold 55GB. Let's
> say your first partition is /boot (1GB), your second is / (48.5GB) and your
> swap partition is [swap] (.5GB).

But why are two partitions set to "maximum size" during the nuke restore?
I didn't make this up, I see it during the partitioning phase of the
restore.

> Mondo 1.6x will resize your partitions at boot-time to match the 'larger'
> hard drive. Your /boot will be 1.1GB, your / will be 53.35GB and your swap
> partition will be.... but wait, 1.1+53.35=54.45GB. That's more than the 50GB
> which the hard disk will in practice hold. That means Mondo will resort to
> 'maximum size' for the / partition.
> 
> When Mondo then tries to allocate the swap partition, it finds that the hard
> disk is full.
> 
> If the hard disk had told the truth, none of this would have happened.
> 
> At this point, you're probably asking why Mondo resizes the mountlist
> automatically. Answer: because most users wanted that. That's why I added
> the functionality.
> 
> Now, you ask, why don't I add a feature to let you disable that feature? :)
> OK, how about 'nuke noresize' in Mondo 1.7x at boot-time? There. :)

That's good to know. However my questions don't fit your scenario as
described. 

Forgive my insistance. I'm doing a presentation for KPLUG
http://www.kernel-panic.org Saturday, and I want to be prepared.

-- 
Neil Schneider 				    pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net
					   http://www.paccomp.com
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