On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 09:49:58AM +0100, David Laight wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 10:19:05AM +0200, Lubos Vrbka wrote:
> > > When labeling a hard disk before installing binary sets for 1.6.1,
> > > there was an item "Preserve" which I don't recall seeing in previous
> > > versions.  The title line has the usual Size, Offset, End, FStype,
> > > Bsize, Fsize and Mount Point, but now with an extra "Preserve" second
> > > from the right.  I looked in INSTALL.html, but I didn't see any
> > > explanation.
> > > 
> > IIRC it means that the currently existing filesystem is left "as is", 
> > i.e. it isn't newfs'ed during the install process.
> 
> To avoid confusion I've changed sysinst to label the column 'newfs'
> (and inverted the yes/no)

Thanks for looking into the problem.  To tell you the truth, what took me
aback was that I'm used to looking at the _partition table_ that sysinst
shows me as reflecting what I'd see if I looked using `disklabel`.  Since
I always install on read/write tested, zero-written and DOS formatted hdds,
it just didn't ring a bell.  Thus, I was afraid that "Preserve" was going
to make some kind of weird non-writable, read-only partition on the disk.
Once I heard Lubos' explanation, it immediately became clear.

Actually, "Preserve" might be a better choice than "newfs".  Or perhaps some
method other than adding a new column to the partition table, i.e., spell it
out: "Only partitions prefixed with an asterisk will be newly created.
Unmarked partitions will be preserved."  Above all, any changes like that
need to be documented in INSTALL.* and searchable with a unique, literal
string.  I searched (/) on "Preserve", but nothing came up, so I turned to
the list for help.

-- 
henry nelson