Re: [PATCH] Give more useful names to other bootable devices

[John Summerfield <debian herakles homelinux org>]

David Cantrell wrote:
> On Sep 22, 2008, at 12:44 PM, Will Woods wrote:
>
> > Give more useful names to other bootable devices.
> >
> > This patch for booty would give more useful (descriptive, anyway) names
> > to the other operating systems that booty finds.
> >
> > The patch is untested but really obvious. I'm guessing that trademark
> > concerns are the only thing that kept someone from doing this sooner.
>
> Perhaps, but my personal take on it is there is the do-I-care issue and 
> the technical issue.
>
> For me, I don't care what is on a user's HFS or DOS partition.  Maybe 
> it's bootable, maybe it's not.  But it's not our problem.
>
> The technical issue is we can't really make the assumption that all 
> bootable HFS partitions on ppc systems are MacOS X.  I mean, it's 
> probably a safe guess, but it's not guaranteed.  The same with DOS 
> partitions.  We can't assume it's Windows.  The only way to know for 
> sure what's on those filesystems is to dig down in to them and see what 
> will boot from them, and then that brings in a whole set of knowledge 
> that isn't really part of anaconda.
>
> > I'm not a lawyer, but I'm almost positive this is Fair Use, as we're
> > just using the marks to identify the product.
> >
> > Microsoft's page on the matter[1] says:
> > "You may use the Windows trademark in a referential phrase such as
> > 'works with Windows XP,' ..."
> > And Apple has very similar guidelines[2] about the use of "Mac OS".
> >
> > Naturally I'll defer to Legal here, but it seems pretty obviously OK.
>
> If it's a legal issue, that makes it easy.  I think the technical issue 
> is more valid.  Rather than saying 'Other', I would vote for saying 
> 'Bootable HFS partition' or 'Bootable NTFS partition'.  That's about as 
> much knowledge as we have.

Anaconda used to label Windows partitions "Windows." Someone suggested, 
jocularly I thought, that there might be a tm issue and next thing it 
was changed.

I would prefer labelling, correctly as far as possible. At least with 
DOS partitions, it's easy to tell whether a partition is bootable, the 
first byte is not a NUL. A more stringent test might be in order, but 
it's a good start.

If it contains a directory, \WINDOWS then it's almost certainly Windows.
Otherwise, if it contains \MSDOS.SYS or \PCDOS.SYS it's MSDOS or PCDOS 
respectively. If the filesystem is NTFS it's almost certainly Windows, 
even without \WINDOWS (which is the default name, but another can be 
chosen). I suppose one could look for the NT loader instead.

If it contains an OS X filesystem, it's almost certainly Darwin. I don't 
know that OS X can run from a DOS partion, but Darwin can.

If it's a Linux filesystem, it's likely Linux but one might like to know 
which one: at one point I had four different distros on one box.

I don't have a Solaris or *BSD* system to inspect atm.

I don't propose that all alternatives need to be recognised, but some 
should.




--

Cheers
John

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