Partitions (was Re: Debian installation)
The meaning of primary and extended partitions is the same in DOS
and Linux. The maximum number of partitions on any drive is 4, of
which none or one may be extended and all others must be primary. Any
number of virtual or logical partitions may be installed within the
extended partition. Extended partitions have a type of 'extended'
because they do not contain a file system as such, but are a container
or wrapper for one or more logical partitions. On my disk, I have an
extended partition that contains 8 virtual partitions - 3 DOS, 4 Linux
native and 1 Linux swap .
In the partition table given below, /hda1, /hda2, and /hda3 are
primary partitions and /hda4 is an extended partition including
cylinders 1261 - 2484. Cylinders 1261 - 1870 are used for logical
partition /hda5 and cylinders 1871 - 2484 are used for /hda6. (Due to
a [bug|feature] of fdisk, the column 'Begin' is meaningless in drives
containing more than 1024 cylinders.)
Partitioning concepts are discussed in some length in
/usr/doc/util-linux/README.fdisk.gz and briefly in Matt Walsh's
/usr/doc/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO.gz.
Bob
On Tue, 18 Feb 1997 Shaya Potter <spotter@itd.nrl.navy.mil> wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:
>
> > OK - I went back a few messages and you did show us your partition table.
> >
> > > Boot Begin Start End Blocks System
> > > /dev/hda1 * 1 1 163 82120+ Linux native
> > > /dev/hda2 164 164 244 40824 Linux swap
> > >
> > > /dev/hda3 245 245 1260 512064 Linux native
> > > /dev/hda4 1024 1261 2484 616896 Extended
> >
> > Am I reading this right? Could the extended partition in hda3 be
> > overlapping the one in hda4? I see hda3 ending at 1260 and hda4
> > beginning at 1024. I think the problem is that I don't understand
> > extended partitions, and thus I don't see what the difference is
> > between "begin" and "start".
> >
> > > /dev/hda5 1024 1261 1870 307408+ Linux native
> > > /dev/hda6 1024 1871 2484 309424+ Linux native
>
> Something is wrong here. If Extended means what it does in the dos world
> i.e. as opposed to primary, something is very wrong. hda1-4 should be
> primary and hda5-... would be extended. This means that when it says
> Extended, Extended is a type, such as linux native, dos fat, HPFS, NTFS.
>
> Shaya
>
>
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