Re: [PATCH] partitions/msdos.c

[Andries Brouwer <Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl>]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 03:12:28PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> > The default fdisk will assign type 83 to a newly created partition.
> 
> Ok. Is that a "it has done so for the last 5 years" thing? 

The last twelve years.

> > (About type 0: DOS has used type 0 as definition of unused. It is not
> > bad if Linux uses DOS-conventions for a DOS-type partition table.)
> 
> Agreed. At the same time, I could well imagine that some people might use 
> such a type exactly to make DOS ignore it (but I assume the same is true 
> of the regular 0x83 type too, so maybe I'm just being difficult).
> 
> There's certainly a good argument for fixing a known problem (Uwe) and a 
> small enough risk of it breaking anything else.

Yes.

Andries


(Concerning the "size" version: it occurred to me that there is one
very minor objection: For extended partitions so far the size did
not normally play a role. Only the starting sector was significant.
If, at some moment we decide also to check the size, then a weaker
check, namely only checking for non-extended partitions, might be
better at first.)

(Yes, disk capacity is not always known - see e.g. ll_rw_blk.c:
 /* Test device or partition size, when known. */
See also sd.c, with the strange
                sdkp->capacity = 0x200000; /* 1 GB - random */
In such cases we just access the blocks user space tells us to access.)