Re: Partition IDs in the New World TM

Andrew Clausen
2001-01-22T22:31:14Z

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.

Andrew Clausen