[sf-lug] SF-LUG meets Sunday April 2nd 2017 + answer and gdisk

[Bobbie Sellers]

   SF-LUG meets every first Sunday from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M.
and every third Monday from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M.
at the Cafe Enchante, 26th and Geary Boulevard.

     These meetings are usually lightly attended with a high for the
year so far of 8 members.   If you have a problem come along
and maybe we can help but if not we can usually find someone
who can.

     Now at the last meeting, Tom I believe it was, asked me
about the gaps formatting tools leave in the partioning.
This is to provide space with the (U)EFI for further partition
information to be written.   It has been suggested that the
space can be created semi-automatically by specifying an offset
from the previous partition of 128 MiB.

     I learned how to use gdisk which is a tool you can find
on good distributions or on live disks like the GPartEd tool
It is an adaptation of the good old fdisk we used to use.
     This lets you convert MBR disks to UEFI compatible
disks and I also learned about the special partition needed
for machines with a old-fashioned BIOS so that you can use
the GPT (Globally Unique Identification Number Partion
Scheme) which allows up to 128 Primary partition or
124 after you get the special partitions created.
     Just do an online search on BIOS-boot partition
Wiki has a good article.
     If members want to read more about this I have
already written the article as part of my CUCUG column
and can forward that article to you.

     I downloaded a 32 bit version of LXDE a distribution
designed for low resource machines and will be happy
to show that off live but it was disappointing.

     Since I spent the weekend repairing and recreating
my test machine it should be amenable to the install
of Manjaro or perhaps Linux Mint Debian Edition2,
which Manjaro partition tool could not read so could
not be installed.

     Will have copies of late version SystemRescueCD
and of GPartEd at the meeting.  But if you want one
make sure I have one with your name on it.  Better
to have a tool that you do not use than need the tool
and not have it.

     Hope to see some of you all at the meeting.

     Bobbie Sellers