Created attachment 341835 [details] [review]
Update help with partition flags (v1)

Hi Mike,

This is a small patch to add descriptions of more partition flags to the help manual.

Also included is a legacy GRUB MBR tip.

Curtis

Hi Curtis,

I think you should probably remove my name from V1.10 of the revision
history to match the copyrights above.

GParted with libparted 3.2 looking at a GPT also shows flag "prep" not
listed in the updated Manual.

(I did wonder if we should just list the popular flags and refer to the
(lib)parted documentation for the full list.  But which are the common
flags?  And the parted documentation is out of date too!)
https://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_node/set.html

Can you explain why you want to add the tip about (hd0).  The sequence
goes:
2. run grub
3. find boot/grub/stage1
4. "Set the grub root device by specifying the device returned by the
   find command"
There doesn't seem to be adjustment room in the instructions to allow
the user to set their root device of their own choosing.

Thanks,
Mike

Created attachment 341894 [details] [review]
Update help with partition flags (v2)

Hi Mike,

Thanks for reviewing patch v1.

As you mentioned and as I've personally experienced in the past, the parted documentation often seems to be out-of-date.  I recall having difficulty locating a definition of the flags used on partition tables when answering questions in our forum.

In an effort to make it easier to find this information, I added the flags for the GPT and MSDOS partition tables to the GParted user manual.  My preference is to keep all valid flags in the documentation, and not just the common ones because a user might encounter any of the flags while using GParted.

Based on your heads-up I've added the Prep flag to GPT so that all the valid flags are covered.

I've also reworked the GRUB tip into a note with hopefully enough description to understand when a user would use (hd0) versus (hd0,0).  If this is still unclear then please let me know and I'll try to add more explanation.

Thanks,
Curtis

Hi Curtis,

Just need to sort out the GRUB Legacy setup a bit more.  For reference
here is the GNU GRUB Legacy manual on the subject:
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/Installing-GRUB-natively.html

The GParted Manual still says to run "setup (hd0,0)" specifying the
device reported by the find command.  I THINK this is wrong in most if
not all cases.  Separately I did a quick look at Debian 6 and Ubuntu
14.04 LTS and they both use GRUB2.  RedHat/CentOS 6 still does use GRUB
Legacy though.

We should have step 5 similar to how the GRUB Legacy manual structures
it; install into MBR as the first choice with installing into the
partition as the second alternative and NOT mentioning using the value
from the find command.  Something like this:

  5. Reinstall the grub boot loader into the Master Boot Record (MBR)
     with:
       grub> setup (hd0)

     If you want to install the grub boot loader into the boot sector of
     a partition, instead specify a partition with:
       grub> setup (hd0,0)

Mike

Hi Mike,

For background I'm probably an unusual computer user because I have four OSes installed on my computer and I only let one of these write to the MBR and control the boot process.  The other three OSes are chain loaded from the primary boot loader.

The reason I wrote the documentation to install the boot loader into the boot sector of a partition "hd(0,0)" is because this is the least destructive option.  Writing to the MBR "(hd0)" will overwrite the first boot loader used by the computer.

Again I would not qualify as MOST computer users, so I will make the changes you suggested.

Curtis

Created attachment 342034 [details] [review]
Update help with partition flags (v3)

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your reviews of this enhancement.

Attached is an updated patch (v3) with wording changes as mentioned in comment #4.

Curtis

Hi Curtis,

Patch v3 from comment #6 has been commited to upstream GIT for inclusion
in the next release of GParted.  Trivial spelling error fixed too:
   If you want to install the grub boat loader into the boot sector ...
                                   boot

Update help manual with additional partition flags (#776002)
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gparted/commit/?id=c90a8f499c2c33711e99dfb324f2c7545255ad68

Thanks,
Mike

This enhancement was included in the GParted 0.28.0 release on February 14, 2017.