Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 22 Jan 2001 20:30:54 -0200 | From | Andrew Clausen <> | Subject | Re: Partition IDs in the New World TM |
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Russell King wrote: > > Andrew Clausen writes: > > But, for "well behaved operating systems", can't we do it this way? > > (For the dos partition table scheme, 0x83 could be our "file system > > type", 0x82 our "swap type", or whatever) > > I think you're complaining about the partition IDs in this thread, and not > the partition "schemes" that Linux supports. Am I right?
Well, I don't like either, hehe. But, partition IDs are the only thing I'm talking about here (the other was merely drive-by flaming)
> Well, the Linux kernel doesn't really care about partition IDs at all, > except in one circumstance - to detect auto RAID partitions.
Why is this necessary? Can't the RAID drivers probe the device for signatures, the same way file systems do?
(BTW: LVM does this too, and linux-ppc uses partition types as heuristics for finding the root device, IIRC, and lots of other boring stuff. But, I suspect it isn't needed)
> Apart from > that, the kernel couldn't care. You could set all your Ext2 partitions > as ID 82, your swap as ID 83 and Linux would carry on as if nothing had > changed.
Exactly. So, for new disk labels, or whatever, we should recommend to the relevant hackers that we have exactly one number for Linux. Or what?
> About the only user programs that know about partition IDs are: > - fdisk (its part of the partition table format) > - installers (to stop users doing stupid things)
Exactly.
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