Baslinux mailing list

[qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org]

James Miller wrote:
> 
> I'm beginning to think there is some error in the 
> BL2 installation routine.  

I've had a close look at the installation script and 
yes there is an expression which can go wrong.  I have 
modified the script to eliminate the potential problem 
and I will put it in bl2-03.zip (available soon).

> Is BL set to enter the device location from the /cd 
> (instead of the /hd) directory into fstab as the root 
> partition?

No, it is designed to put /hd into the fstab.  The 
problem is in the grep expression:
----------------------------------------------------
set -- `mount|grep /hd`
echo "$1   /       ext2   defaults  1  1" >etc/fstab
----------------------------------------------------
Mount lists the current mounted directories.  This is
piped to grep, which looks for the /hd directory.  Set
parses the line into the positional parameters and $1 
is the first (i.e. the /dev that /hd is on).

The problem is:  I didn't make the grep expression
specific enough.  Not only does grep output the /hd
line, but it also outputs every line that has an /hd 
in it.  So, if the user has mounted /dev/hda1, that 
line is output too.  The parsing routine selects the
first item of output, so whichever partition is first
in the mount table will be written to fstab.

It's a silly oversight, but I never discovered it in 
testing (even though I ran the installation script 
several times on two different computers and checked 
each time that fstab was correct).  Perhaps I was just 
lucky, or perhaps I always mounted my partitions in the 
same order.  I don't know.  

Apologies to anyone who has had a problem with this.  
Special thanks to James for pointing this out.

Cheers,
Steven