(un)corrupted ext2 partitions

Arvind Sankar (arvinds@mit.edu)
Mon, 11 Jan 1999 16:17:44 -0500


Does the ext2 file system depend on /dev/hda5 staying /dev/hda5?

What happened was that I had a working Linux system on my hdd, with
/dev/hda1 as DOS, /dev/hda2 as linux /boot, /dev/hda3 unused, and /dev/hda4
an extended partition with the other linux partitions on it (/, /home etc).
The first partition inside the extended one was unused.

My original idea was to use the two unused partitions to install NetBSD.
However, when I actually looked at the thing, I found of course that it
wants to sit inside a primary partition and carve it up itself.

So I decided to repartition the hdd to allow for installing BSD. I know
this is not a nice thing to do, but still. I noted down the location of all
my Linux partitions, and then proceeded: I deleted /dev/hda3 and 4, and
recreated them with /dev/hda3 bigger, and the extended partition no longer
containing the unused partition that it earlier had. So now / changed from
/dev/hda6 to /dev/hda5. When I booted to try this out, fsck cribbed that
my /dev/hda5 had big problems, and advised me to run e2fsck manually.

I didn't, and instead repartitioned again, with /dev/hda3 a little smaller,
and a tiny partition in /dev/hda4, so that my / went back to /dev/hda6, and
now everything checked clean.

How come this happens? Does the ext2 fs depend on the device number in
some vague way?

I was running kernel 2.1.130 on a Celeron 333. The hdd is an IBM Deskstar.
Model number:IBM-DHEA-38451

-- arvind

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