From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 22 Jan 2001 11:18:00 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 22 Jan 2001 11:17:51 -0500 Received: from postfix.conectiva.com.br ([200.250.58.155]:43787 "HELO postfix.conectiva.com.br") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Mon, 22 Jan 2001 11:17:35 -0500 Message-ID: <3A6C5D12.99704689@conectiva.com.br> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 14:17:22 -0200 From: Andrew Clausen Organization: Conectiva X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [pt_BR] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17-14cl i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, bug-parted@gnu.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Partition IDs in the New World TM Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi all, We have roughly 10 different types of partition tables. We hate them, but it looks like they won't be going away for a long time. Partition IDs seem to create a lot of confusion. For example, most people use 0x83 for both ext2 and reiserfs, on msdos partition tables. People use "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" for ext2 on Mac, etc. Linux doesn't really use partition IDs. Well, not entirely true... it's used on Mac's as a heuristic, for finding swap devices, etc. - but I think this unnecessary. LVM also uses it, but I also think it's unnecessary. So, can anyone remember why we have partition IDs? (as opposed to just probing for signatures on the fs) If new partition table types come out (which is happening, believe it or not...), how should Linux/fdisk/parted handle IDs? Should we have one Linux type, that we use for everything? Should we have one type for each TYPE of data (file system, swap, logical volume physical device, etc.)? Tchau, Andrew Clausen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/