On Sun, Feb 07, 1999 at 12:47:05AM -0600, Brian C. Grayson wrote:
>On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 04:02:34PM -0600, seebs@plethora.net wrote:
>> In message <87vhhfry8b.fsf@jekyll.piermont.com>, "Perry E. Metzger" writes:
>> >Long term, we need "slices" or something similar.
>> 
>> Yeah.  Or at least, support for 16 partitions.  :)
>
>  One thing I've never heard discussed in the partition-wars is,
>why do we not support extended partitions?  From what I've heard,
>one can have an unlimited number of partitions in an extended
>partition, or at least a whole bunch (>16?) of them.

typically, you get space in the main partition table (in sector zero)
for four "primary" partitions.  all the fdisk implementations i've
seen will let you make *one* of those into an extended partion, with
it's own four partitions.  and that's been the limit i've seen so far.

to extend or combine that with bsd disklabels would get you the
"possibility" of 56 individual filesystems on a disk.

when taken to the "logical" extreme.

i'm all for a disk being "a disk from sector 0 to sector n", but i
also want my computers to do what i want and and be able to
interoperate with themselves as much as possible.

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