> I found it somewhat irritating that grub refused to mount my Hurd > partition unless I set the partition type to Linux native. The following > patch will allow ext2 filesystems on GNU/Hurd partitions (type 0x63) as > well. Maybe the whole sanity check regarding partition types should be > dropped?
We who wrote GNU/Hurd found it somewhat irritating that someone (we know not who) decided to pick a random partition type number and call it "GNU HURD". I'm sure it was done with the best of intentions, but what its purpose or meaning is remains a mystery (to me anyway) and seems to serve just to confuse well-meaning folks like yourself. The partition type field identifies the type of the filesystem residing in that partition. The type 0x83 indicates an ext2fs filesystem. Whether written by Linux or the Hurd, an ext2fs is an ext2fs. (Information inside the filesystem itself gives the full details about the particular format being used, which both Hurd and Linux interpret correctly to store Hurd translators on filesystems formatted for that and not on ones not.)
