On 02/05/2024 10:35, Michael wrote:
Besides the automation this feature affords, I find it useful to know what a partition contains without having to mount it. On GPT labelled disks I make use both of the Partition Type UUID and the Partition Name. A quick glance at the gdisk output and if need be its 'i' option has saved my day from formatting the wrong partition more than once! 😉
Iirc from the days of kernel 1.3 and 2.x, the partition type is not used - at all - by linux itself. Dunno about other OSs.
As you pointed out, though, it is used by other tools, which use it to identify what the partition is *supposed* to be used for. For example, auto-assemble with raid.
I'm not sure, but for example I think swap will quite happily let you "mount" a non-swap partiton with swap-on. You can format an allegedly DOS or NTFS partition with ext, and linux won't care ...
Cheers, Wol
