Marc Audard wrote: >Hi, > >I have Mandrake 8.2 installed in dual boot with WIN ME, and everything >works fine. When I tried to install RedHat, I got a message saying the >partition table was unreadable, that I had to reinitialize, with a >subsequent loss of all data. > >It turns out that my partition table looks like this: > >Partition Table for /dev/hda > > First Last > # Type Sector Sector Offset Length Filesystem Type (ID) Flags >-- ------- -------- --------- ------ --------- ---------------------- --------- > 3 Primary 0 433754 63 433755 Linux (83) None (00) > 1 Primary 433755 9622934 0 9189180 Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (0C) Boot (80) > 2 Primary 9622935 39070079 0 29447145 Extended (05) None (00) > 5 Logical 9622935 11181239 63 1558305 Linux swap (82) None (00) > 4 Primary 11181240 11984489 0 803250 Linux (83) None (00) > 6 Logical 11984490 20161574 63 8177085 Linux (83) None (00) > 7 Logical 20161575 39070079 63 18908505 Linux (83) None (00) > > >So the extended hda2 partition (which actually I was never able to see during >the installation of Mandrake 8.0 or 8.2) encompasses the Linux ext2 partitions >hda3-hda7. > >Why is Mandrake able to work on such a partition table? > >What I did: > >a) reduce the Win partition >b) create manually (using the diskdrake tool at the installation step) partitions >c) and that was all! > >Tx > >Marc > What you are facing is that RH for some weird reason requires at least one primary partition.
There is nothing unusual in a primary extended partition enclosing several logical partitions What is the difference between the two? OK a primary partition is listed in the primary partition table.. The last 66 bytes of the 512byte Master Boot record has 4 16-byte entries and a couple of signature bytes. A primary partition is listed here... If there is an extension here, then the first sector of the beginning of the extension partition is examined for a record which should have TWO entries, the first describing a logical partition, and the second pointing to the next extension--so the construction is a chain.... This leaves room to stick other partitions in between or whatever. The reason Mandrake deals with this (And your partition is strange but within the construction rules) is that some nasty old man who worked for Mandrake for a while tried every scenario he could think of to make the diskdrake programmers miserable. The result is a robust tool. Civileme >
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