Re: extended paritions are evil.

Andrzej Krzysztofowicz (ankry@idk.com.pl)
Sun, 8 Feb 1998 20:43:56 +0100 (MET)


Hi,
I think this problem could be solved with new disk naming scheme in devfs.
Regards
Andrzej

> I have lately installed FreeBSD to see if it has any
> cool features which could be assimilated into linux.
> For that I decied to use my test box.
>
> hda1 = NT 5.0 [NT boot manager]
> hda2 = FreeBSD Extended parition [BSD kernel's BM]
> hda3 = Debian 1.3.1 [lilo]
> hda4 = extended [lilo]
> hda5 = RedHat 5.0
> hda6 = unused
> hda7 = unused
> hda8 = Linux swap (shared by RH and Debian)
>
>
> Well if I add support for BSD-style extended paritons
> then hda2 gets expanded into hda{5,6,7,8}
> and extended parition on hda4 becomes hda{9,10,11,12}
>
> so redhat becomes on hda9 and swap on hda12 depending
> if kernel does support BSD style parition table or
> does not not OUH!
>
> Now if I look into the FS support in 2.1.x series
> we there also have extened paritions for SMD (sun)
> Solaris x86, and Mac beside the forementioned
> DOS and BSD (FreeBSD) extended paritions.
>
> This all seems be kind of nuance, and even worse
> it remind me old days of horros with M$ stuff where
> you had A:,B:,C:,D:,E:,F: and so on and whey would all
> change their place if you did modify system slightly.
> (specifcally cd drive liked to become anything from d:
> to z:)
>
> I think it is something what should be addressed,
> as I think the the current form it is kind of
> problem if not nuance. After all part of Linux
> philosophy is to work with everything. and I
> definitely don't want see DOS-II comeback!
>
> One of solutions I could think of was of idea of sub-slices
> Ie, instead of hda{5,6,7,8} for extended parition of hda2
> or hda4 use hda2{a,b,c,d} for extended parition of
> hda2 and hda4{a,b,c,d} for extended parition of hda4
>
> I belive it would work either way and would not break
> everything (what includes, lilo, /etc/fstab, and everything
> what refers to given parition)

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