Re: Partition check order in fs/partition/check.c?

[Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 03:14:56PM +0200, Peter Oberparleiter wrote:
> Hm, what do you think of these additional checks:
> 
> 1. Check for overlap of partitions

That's something which should be done for any partitioning method imho.
I have heard of some situations where, on x86 machines, the DOS and
ext2 filesystems overlapped, but somehow managed to keep working for
a considerable period of time.  Then when it all goes wrong, the user
blamed Linux for screwing their DOS/Windows partition.

This might be an acceptable way out of this problem.

> 2. Check for number of recognized partitions (i.e. size != 0) > 0 

If the checksum seems to be correct and you mis-parse an x86 bios
partition table as powertec, chances are that you'll have a non-zero
size word somewhere in that sector.

> 3. Check for struct ptec_partition.unused1, unused2, unused5 == 0
> (assuming they default to zero)

Unfortunately they don't default to zero.

-- 
Russell King (rmk@arm.linux.org.uk)                The developer of ARM Linux
             http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html