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Topic: Things to add to the FAQ page?

I'm going to spend some time updating the FAQ page on the main site. What I need is some pointers from people that had or have problems that could have been answered through FAQ.

Anything we should add?

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

Maybe links to some tips like :
Save gparted_details.htm file : http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/ti … etails.htm
Howto boot livecd from hard drive : http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/li … oot_hd.htm

But surely some other things, but dont know what atm :-/

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

and how about changing to wiki instead of a static textfile?

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

Personaly, i dont know how a wiki works :-/, neither how much work it needs...

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

well, i don't know what's involved in setting it up and i don't have time to do it anyway smile
it's just an idea and if someone is interested in setting it up, feel free to do so.

a very important item for the FAQ is urging the users to save the details after something went wrong. Somehow most people simply skip this step, which is a pity, because the log often contains very important information.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

I'll look into the wiki stuff today.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

MediaWiki looks pretty good. I installed it at:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/wiki/wiki/

It doesn't work. We need:

* Web server with PHP 5.x or higher.
* A MySQL server, 4.0.14 or higher.

I don't think we can run this from SF. Any ideas?

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

I tried pmwiki too. It seems to work:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/wiki/pmwiki/index.php

Now all I have to do is figure out how to use it. smile

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

Now I'm getting some lockfile error. It's seems it can't write to SF. Boy I wonder why? smile

errrrrrrrrrrr

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

You can get a MySQL database from SF.net (maybe plors would have to request it, as the project owner, I'm not sure).  PHP 5.x might be a problem though...

AFAIK PmWiki should work on SF.net.  At least, I think I've seen PmWiki based wikis there in the past.  If you (Patrick/plors) want I can have a look at it (I've set up a PmWiki in the past).

One issue with PmWiki is that it doesn't have the concept of "registered users"; you have to handle access rights through a file that contains usernames & md5-hashed passwords.  If you want only known people to get access after approval by someone who has shell-access to the project diskspace, that will work...

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

ok, i in the process of finishing up my bachelorproject and moving to south-america, so don't expect too much from me, the next 4 weeks smile
If someone needs permission or if i need to request something, just ask me and i'll do so.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

"If you (Patrick/plors) want I can have a look at it (I've set up a PmWiki in the past)."

By all means go ahead! Just tell me what you need.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

To get a look at PmWiki on SF.net, I would have to be a member of the gparted project, I guess, and maybe get the correct "rights".  (My SF.net username is 'janc13'.)

Otherwise, I could run any wiki that seems to be reasonably safe on my rented server...

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

wiki wiki JanC smile

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

It works!   :-D

The cause of the problem is explained here: http://sourceforge.net/docs/E07/en/#permissions (read about the web server needing write access).  It seems like the web servers mount the project disk space (using NFS) read-only, while it's mounted read/write from the shell servers.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

Great! Thanks again!

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

when someone 'll have one second, just try to explain me what wiki is. I just guess, it is not a pet :-/

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

It will allow us to have anyone we chose update the faq page without having direct access to SF like we do. Trusted users can update the faq if they feel something needs to be added. If this works out well maybe we could do other pages too. The partimage site is a wiki site.

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

This is headed Things to add to the FAQ page - I suggest - how to add a new operation on a selected partition. 

I set 4 operations - create 3 new logical drives, reformat exisitng one from ext2 to ext3.
Last operation failed - didn't wait long enough.  Now I want to re-start that as it has come up with Unformatted.

Can't see how to enter that.

I thin a Wiki is a good idea.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

The desired operation (Format to: ) was greyed out because the partition was mounted. I unmounted it - shown then in Information as unmounted, option to format now available.
Set to format to ext3 - failed - details reported that it was mounted!

Perhaps there are several needed FAQs behind this!

Partition in question is 40 GB, with an old backup on it which I don't mind losing.
System is LinuxMint 3.1 (Celena).

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

How about what utilities come on the LiveCD? I noticed that it doesn't just contain gparted like I thought.

We are talking about the main site, right? Because, if not, I guess my request may already be there.

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

Some topics that I think would be useful on the FAQ page are:

  • Fixing Windows XP boot problems

  • Fixing Windows Vista boot problems

  • Fixing Windows 7 boot problems

These topics might also be useful to add to the GParted Manual similar to:
Fixing GRUB boot problem

Is any one interested in researching and creating such documentation?

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

How about an explanation of what warning icons mean, since there is no tooltip-type popup when the cursor is floated over them?

e.g.
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e273/Darr247/GParted/GParted_WarningIcon.png

Also, on a related subject, how to invoke GParted so it will use ntfsresize with the --bad-sectors parameter. As noted in this message:
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e273/Darr247/GParted/GParted-Bad-Sector.png

Not covered in the docs, so maybe one of the FAQs could tell how?

Thanks for all your hard work on GParted!

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

Thanks Darr247 for this suggestion.

Would you be able to create an enhancement request in GParted application bug reports for this tool tip suggestion?

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Re: Things to add to the FAQ page?

In http://gparted.sourceforge.net/faq.php#faq-13 (in case of moving a partition that is used in the operating system boot process) there is written:
"To fix this problem you will need to reinstall GRUB"

My Mandriva Linux 2010.2 partition had very low write speed because my hard drive is a WD EARS. To get decent write speed a partition must be aligned correctly.
So with gparted-live I shrunk and moved my /dev/sda7 (by removing 2 MB from its beginning and its end). I did NOT reinstall grub as I wasn't sure if the grub of gparted-live could work with Mandriva's grub files.

I was pleasantly surprised that I could boot into my Mandriva without problem.
So please add to the faq that for some people it is not necessary to reinstall grub.

The grub of gparted-live has the same version as Mandriva 2010.2: 0.97.