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Tasklist

FS#3634 - LEARN to be more correct on your tutorials

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Eugenia Loli-Queru (Eugenia) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 08:13 GMT
Last edited by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 08:53 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category System
Status Closed
Assigned To Judd Vinet (judd)
Architecture not specified
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7 Wombat
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

God damn it. >:(

Look at your tutorial for your readers people. You ask them to change their bootloader configuration to:
initrd /initrd26.img
instead of
initrd /boot/initrd26.img

I understand that this was nothing but a mistake but the reality is, this mistake can be DEVASTATING for some people who run LILO and they don't know how to chroot. Thankfully, I run Grub and so I could edit my grub initrd line during loading, but even myself simply copy/pasted that line from your tutorial: http://www.archlinux.org/news.php#191

You must be CAREFUL. Apple or MS would NEVER release how-tos for so important stuff wiht such errors in them. Not to mention that Apple and MS would never depend on the user for these changes. This is a system change that it should have been handled automatically by Arch Linux.

Please fix that tutorial page immediately to reflect the correct path. The longer you wait the more of your users will fall into the trap and get pissed off on your distro.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Judd Vinet (judd)
Sunday, 18 December 2005, 21:19 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 08:53 GMT
hmm, it depends on your setup, some have /boot on their root others have /boot on a extra partition, it's hard to say when you need the right term, because there is also the root (hdx,x) variable this has also an impact, if /boot is needed ot not.
Comment by Eugenia Loli-Queru (Eugenia) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 09:06 GMT
Most people have it on their /boot, on the same partition. Otherwise you should TELL people to SEARCH and FIND their initrd26.img before making this change. The tutorial made look like that people had just to copy/paste the line to their bootloader config file. And honestly, no matter the setup, the initrd26.img is almost never on /, so that tutorial was wrong anyway. Please fix the wording and the controversial line of text before more users fall in the trap.
Comment by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 09:10 GMT
hm no you didn't understand, the hd(x,x) is the poitn if /boot is needed or not.
Comment by Eugenia Loli-Queru (Eugenia) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 09:18 GMT
I still maintain the position that Arch should have made this change transparently from the user (with a kernel patch searching for the image on the same folder as the kernel itself). Doing it manually is a big inconvenience for most of us.

Now, if you really can't make it automatic, at least provide DETAILED information and make sure you TELL people to SEARCH for their image before they do the easy thing and copy/paste that damn line and risk it. Please, for the last time, EDIT Judd's text on the front page and ADD a line to say to people to SEARCH for their initrd26.img in order to include the right path (no, don't point me to the wiki, most people don't read wikis, they expect things that JUST WORK). This is very important.
Comment by Judd Vinet (judd) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 09:23 GMT
From the frontpage announcement:

"To make the kernel use the initrd, I just add the initrd line that points to the /boot/initrd26.img. It is the same path as your vmlinuz26 image."

I figured that was the easiest way to explain it. In menu.lst, as long as the path to the initrd is the same as the path to vmlinuz26, it will work.
Comment by Eugenia Loli-Queru (Eugenia) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 09:36 GMT
I, as a non-native english person, can not understand your sentence. It makes no sense to me. This is how it should have been:

"To make the kernel use the initrd26.img file I just add the initrd line to the bootloader config file, making sure that it's calling the file from the same path as your vmlinuz26 image."

And below, on the actual sample code, write it like this:

initrd /boot/initrd26.img #make sure you use the right path for your installation
Comment by Eugenia Loli-Queru (Eugenia) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 09:48 GMT
Another factual problem with your current text is that on the sentence you are telling people to point to /boot/initrd26.img and later on the sample code you tell them to use "initrd /initrd26.img". This is _extremely_ confusing because you suggest two different paths out of the blue. This is why I advocate about changing the text and the sample code to something more "beefy".
Comment by Judd Vinet (judd) - Sunday, 18 December 2005, 21:18 GMT
Okay Eugenia, I've modified the news text to clarify the change. Thank you for the suggestion.

The reason I chose "/initrd.img" in the menu.lst example (instead of "/boot/initrd.img") is because it is the Arch default. The relativity of that path is defined by the "root" directive in GRUB's menu.lst, and by default, Arch uses the device of the /boot partition in that field, so all paths are relative to /boot. If one chooses "Auto-Prepare" in the installation, this is what will show up in menu.lst


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