I have previously been running linux on an old 386DX33 with a Quantum
Lightning 540meg ide drive. Because the bios in the 386 was so old,
I had to cheat/fool the bios by telling it the drive was smaller than
it really was in order to accept this large drive:
type 47
cyls heads wp lz sect size
1024 16 0 1024 63 504
I now have a 486DX2-66, with a more current bios, so I can tell it the
truth:
type user
cyls heads wp lz sect size lba block
1120 16 65535 1120 59 516 yes 8
I moved the Quantum drive to the 486. Because of the differences in cyls,
lz, sect, ..etc, I Reloaded Everything, as the 486 did not care for the
386's settings. During the original installation (386), I set up the
partitions in the following way:
hda1 primary dos 80meg
hda2 primary / 16
hda3 primary swap 16
hda4 extended
hda5 extended /usr 180
hda6 extended /usr/local 120
hda7 extended /var 32
hda8 extended /home 70
Hda's 5-8 are extended/logical. Hda4 contained hda's 5-8 as reported
in the boot.
When I reinstalled everything this time, I kept the same basic setup,
except for some size changes. This time however, when I got to the
'new' 'primary/logical' options in fdisk, when I created the logical
device, it created hda5:
hda1 primary dos 80meg
hda2 primary / 10
hda3 primary swap 16
hda4 extended
hda5 extended 5
hda6 extended /usr 200
hda7 extended /usr/local 100
hda8 extended /var 40
hda9 extended /home 64.5
Also, when I print the partition record, fdisk gives the following message
for hda4:
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
Phys=(1023, 15, 59) logical=(1119, 15, 59)
In fdisk this time, when I set up the logical partition, I had to give it a
size of 5meg, this was the default size hda4 was assigned when I did
this on the 386.
This time it defaulted to the remainder of free space, 400meg or so, thus
giving me no more options for further logical partitions.
Since 5meg was the default size last time, I assigned 5meg to the logical
hda, which I assumed would be hda5.
Hda4 is in fact a container for hda's 5-9, all the numbers add up. It's
just that the last time I did this (386) hda4 contained hda's 5-8.
I never intended to create hda5 as a nothing partition, I'm not sure
as to why it's here now or what it's for. I gave it a filesystem, but
nothing else. Upon booting the reinstalled system, hda5 is not mounted.
All is the same except that now I have an hda9.
I reinstalled debian linux with the existing 1.2.1 boot, root & base
images, and soon will recompile with the 1.2.13-3 source.
I'm not sure if anyone has had any similar experiences with this, I
guess all I really want to know is, is this mystery partition harmful?
I sincerely hope that I've made myself clear here. This may after all
be nothing to worry about.
Thanks
Barry Masterson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
