Installer partitioner project, dif Debian Ubuntu, lvm, UUID, GPartEd, GRUB, HAL

[Tom H]

> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 4:30 PM, giovanni_re
> <john_re at fastmail.uswrote:
>
> I'm seeing what I think are GRUB & partitioner issues in Ubuntu
> 10.04 (probably starting around 9.10), where Ubuntu, IIRC,
> introduced UUIDs & GRUB2(?). With a Ub9.10 install on a laptop
> (adding on to a 9.04, with additional partitions, & having a
> windows first partition), I can't create a partition in the 10GB
> free space. When I did the 9.10 install, it did something
> strange, hard to explain, something like causing my boot into
> 9.04 to use the proper kernel, but be using the data
> space/partition from 9.10. Also, IIRC, I had 2 partitions that
> gparted showed had the same uuid.
>
> I ran Debian from about 1998-2005, & Ubuntu from 2005-2010. I
> only use the "alternate" installer, so that I can custom set my
> partitions. I've never had problems like this before Ub 9.10.
>
> My questions are largely about the difference between what
> Debian has/is been/doing, & what Ubuntu began doing in the past
> release or two, wrt the partitioner, GRUB, LVM, & UUIDs, HAL,
> etc.
>
> IIRC, Ubuntu began doing stuff differently than Debian, like
> with UUIDs, & now, from the release notes on Ub 10.4, they say
> they are now removing their addition of HAL (UUIDs?) in order to
> enable faster bootup. "This release fully removes HAL from the
> boot process, making Ubuntu faster to boot and faster to resume
> from suspend."
> http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/1004overview
>
> Did ubuntu do something unwise with making use of UUIDs, & now
> they are backtracking? Did Debian do any of that?
>
> Here's my post & thread from yesterday with more info: 10.4
> Partition Disks Error Unable satisfy constraints, overlapping
> partitions https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2010-
> April/216652.html With this error message from the alternate
> installer partitioner: "Partition Disks Error: Unable to satisfy
> all constraints on the partition : Can't have overlapping
> partitions." (Note: it failed to give any useful numerics, ex
> partition overlap positions, that would enable progress if
> seeing what was wrong, or determining if there was a bug in the
> partitioner sw.)
>
> What sw is the partitioner in the alternate installer? parted?
> fdisk? other????
>
> GPartEd (0.4.3) from 9.04, fully apt updated, (& the "help"
> doesn't exist), on an install on a different machine, where I
> put a data partition in the extended partition, for info about
> the "lvm2" "filesystem" there, says "Warning: Logical Volume
> Management is not yet supported". Has that been fixed yet?
> What's the state of LVM in current Debian & Ubuntu?
>
> What new things Ubuntu is doing, wrt these issues, is being put
> into Debian? Is debian usin HAL, UUIDs, LVM, GFUB2, etc??
>
> Well, there are so many questions here, cause there seem to be
> several deficiencies in various parts of the sw Ubuntu is/has
> beenusing/used (partitioner in installer, GRUB2, LVM, HAL).

Ubuntu started using grub2 by default (for clean installs) with 9.10.

UUIDs have been usable in Ubuntu since 6.06 and in Debian since Etch.

UUIDs have been used by default since Ubuntu 6.10 and Debian Lenny.

HAL has nothing to do with UUID use. Ubuntu has not deprecated HAL
independently; the upstream freedesktop project has done so. sid
(Debian unstable) does not use HAL either.

Regarding your laptop problem, I suspect that the installation of 9.10
changed the UUID of your swap partition. I don't understand your
problem ("the 9.4 was somehow booting
from/through the 9.10 partition") but someone posted that you might
not be able to add a partition because it would be a 5th primary
partition in an earlier post.

9.04's parted doesn't understand ext4.

parted recognizes the devices underlying PVs and lists their size and
their lvm flag when "print" is run, but it cannot manipulate
PVs/LVs/VGs.

Since gparted is, AFAIK, a front-end for parted, ...

The alternate installer (and probably the live installer too) is the
debian installer and uses fdisk-udeb (which is different from
util-linux's fdisk) to partitions disks. I usually format disks with
parted or fdisk before installs and then select those partitions
during the install.