> Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 03:11:51 +0200
> From: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl
>
> There is a bad bug in the ext2 file system, namely the fact
> that the magic number is not stored in the same relative
> position as minix uses.
>
> This is not really a bug in the ext2 filesystem --- *all* of the
> filesystems store their magic numbers at different offsets.
>
> A clean solution to all of this would be to have the genhd code store
> the partition type code in the partition table along with all of the
> rest of the partition table's vital statistics, and then have the root
> filesystem autodetection code use that type code as a hint to see which
> filesystem it should try to mount first.
Just an idea: There's a lot of room in the first cylinder (track?) of
each new partition. For my SCSI 1GB disk these are 7MB per cylinder.
Not even OS/2 boot manager needs it all. Now we need a good idea...
>
> - Ted
>
>