I nearly lost my sanity

English Soapbox
#1

I went to install OpenSUSE 11.0 on my pc just a few hours ago. Suddenly, everything goes wrong. I lost my Ubuntu installation. I knew I was doing the right thing. It is clear it display /dev/sda2(my second partition) as installation location. But, why on earth it put all the files on my first partition where my Ubuntu installation resides after it formatted my second partition. Can you (developers) make a better installation options? Like asking where exactly the user want to install OpenSUSE on his/her drive(give a drop-down list). I also choose to boot from partition which mean OpenSUSE’s bootloader will be installed on its partition but that’s not what happen, because it had overwrite my MBR. I can be considered lucky not to lose all my files but I’m very sad. I hope everyone can understand me. For your info, I’m using GNOME Live CD, as DVD image is too big.

Regards…

#2

OpenSuse partitioner is a bit cryptic, if you compare it with the same on other distributions…
by the way did u used the installation of ubuntu under windows (i have same on my machine, where it installs ubuntu under a folder in windows file system) and then somehow it very intelligently makes it look like a partition… !

#3

I’m not using Windows. Ubuntu is my primary operating system. That’s why I’m really sad.

#4

Thread moved to Soapbox

#5

Good you didn’t lost it.
Just kidding, anyway this is soapbox:)

#6

The installer / partitioner clearly (in red, no less) states what it’s going to do and where.

If you could not understand what it was doing you should not have proceeded in the first place but double check the procedure.

#7

I think the solution is to have hard drive labels.

Perhaps you didn’t know what was on /sda1 or /sda2 per se. If the partitions are labeled correctly, that solves the issue.

And frankly, losing a Ubuntu partition to openSUSE is a good thing. Trust me.

#8

The installer / partitioner clearly (in red, no less) states what it’s going to do and where.

If you could not understand what it was doing you should not have proceeded in the first place but double check the procedure.

Well, I checked it more than twice, I’m really sure what I’m doing because I’ve installed it on my VirtualBox before.

I think the solution is to have hard drive labels.

Perhaps you didn’t know what was on /sda1 or /sda2 per se. If the partitions are labeled correctly, that solves the issue.

I knew what on /sda1 and /sda2. But, maybe I made mistake on labeling.

And frankly, losing a Ubuntu partition to openSUSE is a good thing. Trust me.

The bad thing is OpenSUSE did not work. I have to reinstall everything. The good thing is all my files safe.

#9

I learned a valuable lesson over the weekend. Never, Never, Never, attempt to format a usb stick when your 5 year old child is pestering you.

(Background: I was using a script which partitions and formats a device to look like a Zip disk. I was doing that to create bootable usb sticks…)

The Bad: I repartitioned and formatted /dev/sda instead of /dev/sdc, so I wiped my system drive.

The Not So Bad: Since system repair was out of the question, I decided to install OpenSUSE 11l.

The Good: I have /home on a separate drive - so all my “stuff” was safe and sound :slight_smile:

Paul

#10

Opensuse partitoner is very good. Are you sure that in an multiboot environment you choose to mount the wrong partition (ubuntu) as /? I had Ubuntu 8.04 already istalled and then i installed os11.0 side by side with the other operating systems and i had no problems. Just one has to be sure about the partioning scheme when doing a multiboot environment