On Sat, 5 Feb 2011 09:10:21 -0800
Michael Moore <[email protected]> wrote:

> fdisk -l shows this now:
> 
> Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x74b860c1
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *           1         192     1536000   27  Unknown
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
> /dev/sda2             192       19882   158165141    7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda3           37729       38914     9512960   17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda4           24981       37729   102398977    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/sda5           24981       37206    98190336   83  Linux
> /dev/sda6           37206       37729     4207616   82  Linux swap / Solaris
> 
> Partition table entries are not in disk order

======%<------ snip! ------>%======

> It seems to indicate that /dev/sda1 is an EISA partition, and
> I'm not really clear on what that means or whether I actually
> need it.  My problem is that I wanted to try installing Arch
> Linux and Arch uses cfdisk for the install.  cfdisk doesn't
> like the fact that /dev/sda1 doesn't end on a cylinder boundary
> and it craps out with a fatal error, saying something about me
> having illegal partitions (grrr).

I submit that cfdisk is complaining about the partition limits,
not the type ID of sda1.  Note that the End & Start blocks of
sda1 and sda2 are the same.  The same holds true for sda4/sda3,
sda5/sda6, and sda6/sda3. This is bad.  Though you're not likely
to ever reach the last block of a partition, it is possible.  In
which case, the starting block of the next partition would be
overwritten, which would hose the whatever filesystem is resident
in that partition.  This could make for a very bad day indeed.

(FWIW:  A list of partition types I found on the web lists ID 27
as "'PQservice' -- Acer hidden rescue partition.  Must be FAT32.
Press Alt-F10 during boot to start this.  Also other
manufacturers use this type for their rescue partition."  See
<http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html>.)


--Dale

--
Q:  How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
A:  Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
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