Re: mdadm file system type check

["William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@gentoo.org>]

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On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 13:10 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>
> First, please learn the difference between file system type (user data 
> ON the device), and partition type (a byte in the partition table).

Which it's technical name would be a partition system ID. However older
versions of fdisk did refer to the t option as file system type.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/ref-guide/s1-filesystem-ext3-create.html

Given it's quite old and all newer docs refer to it mainly as partition
system id. At least that's what's shown in current fdisks

t   change a partition's system id

Sorry for the miss-clarification. For the record, simply changing the
partitions system id from 83 -> fd allowed the commands that previously
failed to succeed and create the array.

> Second, mdadm cares not a bit about the partition type,

That would be my understanding of it so far, and experience with it.

>  although some 
> init scripts might.

FYI, this was a new install running on a livecd. So no init scripts were
involved.

>  The reason it didn't work was because the partition 
> was zero size or missing, and would not work regardless of the partition 
> type.

Negative, it's one of the things I suggested for them to take a look at.
Even provided the snippet of the IRC log that I left out containing that
information in another post. To save you from having to dig it out. Here
it is again :)

wltjr: kingtaco|work: likely something else, partition off, wrong fs type, or etc
kingtaco|work: /dev/sda1 1 17 136521 83 Linux
kingtaco|work: /dev/sdb1 1 17 136521 83 Linux

Also I really would not be reporting this, or wasting any one's time if
it was not something abnormal. Thus reporting it, and my
miss-clarification of stuff surely did not help explain the situation :)

-- 
William L. Thomson Jr.
Gentoo/Java

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