Re: fdisk request for functionality (or info)

[Peter Cordes <peter@cordes.ca>]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 10:27:28AM +0200, Karel Zak wrote:
> The tricky thing is that fdisks by default see GPT partition, so you
> have to force the tools to ignore GPT and use PMBR.

 Would it be possible to add a more user-friendly way to present this
to the user?

Maybe a special command to toggle the PMBR bootable flag while looking
at the GPT?  That would make the complexity / existence of the PMBR more
discoverable for users, because it would show up in the built-in help
command output while looking at the GPT.  Toggling bootable is just
about the only useful thing you can do with the PMBR on a GPT disk,
and by far the most common, so "hiding" that functionality / status when
looking at the bootability of GPT isn't ideal.

>  3) use sfdisk:
> 
>       sfdisk --label-nested dos --activate /dev/sda 1

That's pretty non-obvious.  I don't think many people would come up
with that on their own if they aren't partitioning / sfdisk experts.
Of course it makes a good recipe, so hopefully people will find it
with google.

-- 
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ;  e-mail: X(peter@cor , des.ca)

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
 Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
 my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BC