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Talk:Moving system directories to a flash card

Revision as of 08:18, 25 July 2008

Deletion

This article duplicates a lot of information in Booting from a flash card, isn't properly formatted or capitalized, and covers an un-recommended method for expanding the available application installation space. If this process must be documented, the article needs to be renamed, slimmed down (to only include the non-duplicate, relevant information), cleaned up and carry a health warning at the top, as booting from a flash card is a much cleaner, safer, more effective and more reliable method of achieving the same goal. —GeneralAntilles 09:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

finding a better name

the main difference with booting from a flash card is that this way part of the system remains on the internal memory, while others are kept on the (internal) flash card. this is desirable (according to me) because this way I use the internal memory for volatile information (as for example the /tmp partition) and the flash card for more static data.

so: which name do you think would be better for this page? I had seen the booting from a flash card and also tried it out, but in the end I like my approach better: separating /usr and /home from the rest of the system makes it possible to reflash the machine (or the flash card) without loosing your customisations.

as for typesetting and cleaning up, being this a wiki, I believe it's better to keep things that needs being corrected (and asking that someone does so) than removing them. so please don't keep this page marked for deletion but just for merciless editing.

I have looked a bit around here, maybe not good enough, but I did not find guidelines on capitalization, typesetting and also very little in general on how to submit new content.

how do I add a "health warning?"

If it's something you wouldn't be willing to hand to your boss, then it's not up to snuff for this wiki. :) —GeneralAntilles 10:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't get it... wikis are for cooperative development of usable documentation I thought. ... I would never hand my boss a printout from a wiki, but I would have no problems in sending him a link to such a page and telling him, mark or correct yourself what you don't like, then tell me when you're done, I'll do my best again... yes: I have a democratic boss! User:mfrasca

I also think "potential deletion" is too harsh, especially for someone starting to contribute in the wiki. It has the "old Midgard article" flag, which is enough. If there is a "this page needs cleaning" let's use it as well. I don't agree with the "willing to hand to your boss", most excellent works start as scraps and drafts some day. If you delete them before they get mature...--qgil 12:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

More potential flags (thinking in general, not necessarily to this article here) could be "following these steps might harm your system", "this is not a recommended approach, be careful"... etc. But deleting, I would do it only for really outdated and useless stuff - unless you are the author and you yourself thing that this page has no sense in the wiki.--qgil 12:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

the "old midgard tag" is something I added a bit later. the page could maybe contain a "deletion policy", the conditions under which you can expect your page to be deleted sooner or later. User:mfrasca 2008-07-20 12:38 UTC

Part of the issue here is that this method of extending the rootfs is significantly less reliable and effective than just straight booting from a flash card, and this article could confuse some newbies (even with a large and hard to miss health warning) into using this method over the other. The results of which are bad. I'm in favor of deleting this if its. I'm not sure why the Midgard article tag is relevant in any way, as it doesn't appear to come from any Midgard article that I'm able to locate. Suffice to say, it's bad advice that really has no benefit over booting entirely from a card and lots and lots of disadvantages. I'm proposing deletion as much for the content itself as the quality of the presentation. —GeneralAntilles 14:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know... I think that if you have arguments to show that one method is better than the other, then leave both methods and praise one on the corresponding page. users will see a refined and trustworthy page and select it instead of a confused and loudly unrecommended one. oh, the page on midgard is this: http://maemo.org/community/wiki/howto_keep_usr_apart User:mfrasca 2008-07-21 8:41 UTC

I generally agree with generalantilles in this case. Any user who would benefit from moving /usr and /home to the SD card should be able to figure this out. And any user who can't figure this out on their own is probably better off just going ahead and booting from SD since it is better documented and more modular. Deletion might be a little harsh, but really, I don't see what it adds to the wiki. --johnx 08:33, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

decide please

so, do we vote or how does it work? I would like to know whether I will find this page here next time I will need it, or if I need to keep it somewhere else. user:mfrasca 2008-07-22 16:35 +0200

I have no opinion about this specific page since I don't know enough about the topic. However, I want to stress that I'm against deleting pages in general. Here we have a wiki contributor trying to do his best with a wiki page, with all good intentions. Deleting his work is no good in the short or mid term since. Instead, the page can be edited, commented, flagged, bannerized, whatever you want. The contributor might learn from other experienced developers, think about things and most importantly, feel good in this community and encouraged to keep contributing, in these or other topics. Marking a first page of a contributor for deletion as soon as it lands doesn't really help improving the case and will probably cause these people just not bothering anymore. But perhaps this needs deeper discussion somewhere else since I also see the aim of GeneralAntilles. It's only that I prefer bug red banners and edits than sending a page for deletion. Deleting pages should be left for pages nobody cares anymore, and it is clear that at least one contributor cares about this page now.--qgil 09:31, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

anybody suggesting a better name?

I have removed the 'remove' tag. I hope you don't mind...

If anybody feels like choosing a better name for this page, that will be mostly welcome. I have also tried to add a big fat disclaimer at the top of the page. If you think that's not big and fat enough, please make it stronger. My most sincere thanks.

Also, if you add a category for unrecommended pages, please mark this one with that tag.

An even nicer thing to build could be a voting system that enables users (signed in!) to anonymously vote against or in favour of a contribution (but -again- not with the purpouse of removing it, just to make authors see what is appreciated and what is not).

Thanks everybody for all constructive critics. -mfrasca 08:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

If you can just edit the titles so they start with a Capital letter, then you will have a page that indeed shouldn't gor for deletion imo. Other people can add comments and disclaimers there if they want. Thanks for your constructivism as well.

In the past I had proposed to have a system to rate documentation pages. The issue is less simple than it seems (e.g. a bad page gets bad rating - then it gets revamped and the content is excellent... will all the people that rated low come back and rate high). In any case, feel free pushing a proposal. There are things like http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Rating that might be of interest for others as well.--qgil 08:17, 25 July 2008 (UTC)