hi,
anonym wrote (13 Mar 2012 12:28:37 GMT) :
>> "Missing OS", right?
> Yes.
>> I would not be surprised if GParted played badly with the GPT
>> attributes. E.g. to display the attributes of /dev/sdc1, run:
>>
>> $ sgdisk /dev/sdc --attributes=1:show
> That particular command gave me nothing.
This indicates some software (be it GParted, or GNOME disk utility, or
whatever) removed from sdc1 the attributes set by our USB installer,
hence making it unbootable.
See
https://tails.boum.org/todo/usb_install_and_upgrade/todo/#index1h2
Please try to confirm what software exactly is at fault. We, and all
OS that start using GPT, need to get that fixed soon.
> Yeah, "usable" was a bad choice of word. What I'm getting at is the
> potential to utilize the media to its fullest. Personally I get very
> frustrated when using tools where the developers have made a these
> type of "balancing choices" for me without any option to override it
> and adjust it according to my wishes.
So am I.
But I think Tails' job is very often about making balancing choices.
Also, from a developer and UI designer point-of-view, slightly better
supporting every possible minority usecase is often not worth:
1. initial code writing work
2. future code maintenance work
3. discrepancies in users' setup => more painful user support
4. cluttered GUI => more complicated for those who don't even want
to think about balancing room for upgrades vs. room for
persistent data, that is probably 99% of Tails users.
A possible middle ground could be to add a command-line switch (and
nothing in the GUI), for those who really want to decide what size
their system partition should be, and are prepared to deal with the
consequences. That way, we get rid of #4, such "power users" shall not
wait much support from us in #3, and #1 and #2 are much less work.
>> Please remember that our current, pre-USB-installer, instructions to
>> install Tails on this very same USB stick would leave no room at all
>> for persistence; this has been true since the beginning of Tails.
>> What is currently being proposed for Tails 0.11 is *way better* for
>> 2GB USB stick owners than anything we have shipped until now.
> Of course, but since this is our (I assume) final solution to the
> problem I still feel entitled to talk about situations where things
> improved but (IMHO) not enough. After all you said you're "not in favour
> of adding such widgets at all", which I interpreted as a final decision
> on this issue from your part.
Meta: I'm not in favour of doing so, partly for the reasons listed
above (I'm unlikely to change my mind on those, but they are not meant
to be enough, in themselves, to make a "final decision" without
considering other parameters), and partly, again, because any more
feature-writing time spent on that specific codebase is not time
well-spent IMO. That's quite different from a final decision made on
a final solution.
Anyway: adding a command-line switch and testing it should be
a one-hour task for someone not familiar with the codebase.
Patches are welcome.
As far as the GUI is concerned, I think we should reconsider this
matter once we get to rebase our USB installer on top of Ubuntu's.
How about that?
Cheers!
--
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