On Sunday 20 March 2016 09:45:36 Felix Miata wrote: > Gene Heskett composed on 2016-03-20 05:34 (UTC-0400): > > Adam Wilson wrote: > >> On Fri, 18 Mar 2016 22:21:58 +0000 Lisi Reisz wrote: > >> > No. I checked and double checked that the partitions on the disk > >> > which I wanted to use for installation were all marked with the F > >> > for format, and that nothing on the disk it had been told to > >> > leave alone had an F. It kept wanting to format the spare disk's > >> > swap, which I did not want. > >> > >> Why not? You wanted to carry over the swap created by a previous > >> installation? > > > > Doing that, leaving a potentially dirty swap for a new install? No > > sensible reason to do so, format that puppy. > > In multiboot, re-formatting swap is a problem creator. Mounting is > generally via UUID. Formatting changes UUID. Missing UUID at boot > usually means booting into rescue mode to repair fstab. So at best, > assuming one swap per system and not mounting by device name, one > installation *might be* benefited to the (probable) detriment of only > one installation. In all other cases in which a unique swap per > installation is not used (which never happens here), and swap mounting > is not by device name (here, swap is often by device name), one > installation might be benefited, to the detriment of multiple > installations.
Faced with a similar problem as Lisi's during this install as I had 4 drives in it then and 3 swaps mounted, I did remove the other drives, so my fstab is by UUID for everything I am using. Memory is now faint, but ISTR, when I first rebooted after plugging in the drive amanda uses as a tape vault, I ran blkid and used the UUID to add that drive to fstab. When I do a new install, I generally do it on a new drive, but its been in the machine long enough to go get any firmware updates it needs and reflash them. Every drive I've bought locally or from NewEgg or Tiger Direct in the last 5 years has had old, buggy, sometimes slow firmware in it, so they all will probably need reflashed for using them for work. I might add that my drive failure rate since I started doing that has fallen off a cliff. sda says 23,000+ hours sdb says 58,000+ hours Now, I do note that sdb has a re-allocated sector count of 25, but no clue as to how many spares are left but that does sound like its time to retire it. Both are older 1 terrabyte drives that I planned on replacing this summer. The newer crop of drives seems to be maturing, but I also expect the newer drives will be 4 kilobyte sectors too. Hopefully by then our disk tools will have caught up and can transparently use both GPT partitions AND 4Kb sectors. The current boot drive is a 4Kb sector drive, and I frankly had one hell of a time using the installers disk tools, getting it properly aligned so its read/write speed was at least usable. Thanks Felix & everybody that has read this far. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
