On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, Scott Ragen wrote:
> An fdisk produces two partitions as below:
>
> /dev/hda4 420 1216 6401902+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/hda5 420 1216 6401871 83 Linux
>
> If you notice the start and end cylinders, they are both the same.
> I have tried mounting hda4 to see what it is, but it comes up with the
> wrong fs type etc.
>
> Can anyone put some reasoning into what looks to be a computer
> contradicting itself?
/dev/hda4 is an extended partition.
An extended partition is - well, consider it a large "wrapper" for
numerous "smaller" partitions {and the "smaller" part can be just a few
blocks, as in your case".
Extended partitions came into being because when disk drives were first
considered, nobody ever thought you'd need more than 4 "primary"
partitions - I'm a little hazy on the details, but basically, if you want
more than 4 partitions, you can have 3 "primary" partitions {read:
bootable partitions for a simple translation} and one extended partition
which has a number of logical partitions inside it {hence the "smaller"
bit}.
In your case, there's no contradiction - /dev/hda4 is the extended
partition, and /dev/hda5 is the logical partition inside it.
Personally, I wouldn't have set things up that way - I bet you used an
installer which dropped Linux over the top of a WindoZe install which
already had an extended partition on it, hence the result.
There's no damage or risk involved - you can leave it alone.
Alternatively, you can re-install Linux by deleting the existing
partitions completely, and re-creating one single primary partition.
Note that if you choose to delete the partitions which exist you will lose
ALL data on the partition involved. So don;t do it if you've got anything
important ont he machine.
DaZZa
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
