Re: [Cooker] ldm_validate_partition_table - what's that?

[Ron Stodden]

Pixel wrote:

Ron Stodden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

All logical partitions must be in cylinder order in the various MBRs along the
extended chain
for Windows.     Partition Magic does this.

"must be" is truly wrong. There's no such things as a specification  for this.

Sad, isn't it? I am quoting verbatim from the PM manual, and what it says
is in agreement with my experience.

windows tools do create non-ordered logical-partitions linked list

That would surprise me.

On the other hand, Linux utilities create MBR entries in order of partition
creation time.
This is true for fdisk and cfdisk, to my knowledge.   Windows cannot handle
this.

wrong. AFAIK windows doesn't (didn't?) like many things, esp. when
there is more than one primary partition (why??)

Never struck that. There would usually be at least two primary paritions on a
windows drive - C and extended.

Linux partition managers also fail to set up the CHS numbers to reflect the
LBA numbers.

?? parted does a real good job on this, bothering you if it can't find
out the good CHS numbers for your drive.

diskdrake doesn't bother much since CHS is not used anymore, except by
old OSs (esp. DOS)

If they disagree PM offers to correct things, so they are used, and you never
know when you might have to fall back on DOS. Many floppy-based utilities
use DOS, eg the Partition Magic rescue floppies, so LBA => CHS must be
enforced.

see http://www.mandrakelinux.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/gi/docs/Partition-ends-after-end-of-disk.txt?rev=1.5

Partition-ends-after-end-of-disk is only one of the many EOD possibilities for the
last extended partition that are not properly checked for.

That's why I always create a minimum size ext2 unused sentinel partition at the
end of the extended partition - saves LOTS of grief. Anyone that doesn't is
playing with fire.

Accordingly, Linux-created partitions cannot be guaranteed to be acceptable to
Windows.

you mean FAT partitions created under linux?

No, I meant drives where the logical partitions are not chained in increasing
start cylinder order.

AFAIK there's a pb regarding the boot code which is not written
correctly when windows is installing on a linux-pre-formatted
partition.

The best solution I know is never to create partitions except with Partition
Magic (which
does not support ext3, Reiserfs, etc.) or you must dedicate a hard drive to
Windows
partitions only if you need to double-boot with Windows.   You could also
choose to
dedicate an entire machine to Windows only.

Yes, you can also use cfdisk etc very carefully, making sure that all
partitions are created and exist in start cylinder order.

wow, i wonder why you write "very carefully" since it's the default
behaviour, unless you mess around quite a lot with your partitions.

default - not in my experience just two days ago.

It is long past time that the Linux community or FSF produced a GPL
all-OS-compatible
Partition Manager that includes resizing, copying, deleting, undeleting,
checking, formatting,
converting (retaining file integrity), labelling. setting active, defragging,
defragging by file-oriented copy out format copy back, info, bad sector
handling,
partition hiding, resize root capacity, resize clusters, etc.

wow... i didn't receive many patches on diskdrake from you, nor many
contributions on parted mailing list ;p

I did check it out early, and found it too immature to be trusted.

as for me, i think diskdrake is powerful enough, and other tools need
more badly our development time.

You are correct - it is an industry compatibility problem, but there is
no properly funded regulating body over the whole industry, except
ISO, which, strangely, and to its shame, seems to have so far ignored
this problem/opportunity.

(and since fat is nearly dead, time working on it (like "resize
clusters") is a waste)

I think Linux will have to retain the ability to mount FAT32 partitions
for a very long time yet, plus whatever other file systems Microsoft
has and will invent.

--
Ron. [Melbourne, Australia]
20030106 updates now available for Fastest Mandrake downloader (English-only) from:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ronst/