From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751326AbZHRXC0 (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:02:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750875AbZHRXC0 (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:02:26 -0400 Received: from hera.cwi.nl ([192.16.191.8]:64597 "EHLO hera.cwi.nl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750837AbZHRXCZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:02:25 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 1827 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:02:25 EDT Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:35:23 +0200 From: "Andries E. Brouwer" To: Mikael Pettersson Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andries Brouwer Subject: Re: completely hide parts of the partition table from Windows? Message-ID: <20090818223522.GA5872@ub> References: <19083.7062.710265.941247@pilspetsen.it.uu.se> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <19083.7062.710265.941247@pilspetsen.it.uu.se> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 11:22:30PM +0200, Mikael Pettersson wrote: > So what I'm looking for is some sub-partition table format with the > following two properties: > 1. resides in an msdos partition entry of a type that Windows does > not inspect (for whatever extended partitions or Apple/BSD/Sun > stuff that Windows may have been taught to recognize) > 2. the locations and sizes of the sub-partitions are NOT limited by > the parent msdos partition entry The reason I added type 85 = LINUX_EXTENDED_PARTITION was precisely your concern: it should be something that DOS/Windows doesnt know about. > I've looked at the code in fs/partitions/msdos.c, and it seems that > most of the extended/BSD/Sun formats don't give me property #2 above. The standard description of extended partitions says that the size field of the parent extended partition descriptor is irrelevant, only the starting sector matters. If you look at the parse_extended() code in msdos.c you'll see that it does not use its parameter first_size. (Except in a certain case that you will not be in.) Make a table that has a Linux extended partition (type 85) that is short enough not to cause Windows to worry. Have logical partitions inside of any size and location you desire. Andries