Re: extended partitions

Linus Torvalds (Linus.Torvalds@cs.Helsinki.FI)
Thu, 5 Oct 1995 07:16:22 +0200

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl: "Re: extended partitions" (Oct 4, 10:49):
> : >It is this line in genhd.c:
> : >
> : > /* prevent someone doing mkfs or mkswap on
> : > an extended partition */
> : > hd->part[minor].nr_sects = 0;
> : >
> : >Since nothing else depends on it, you can take it out.
> : >But I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

How about just changing the 0 into a 1? That will still make mke2fs
refuse to touch the partition, but it should allow LILO to write to the
first sector (first 1k block, actually, but that's still better than
writing a filesystem on the extended partition).

Is that enough for LILO? Could somebody who has this setup test if it
works for them, and I'll change it once I get confirmation. Or does
somebody object to this particular approach?

Linus