Subject: Re: wedges vs. not-quite-wedges, was > 1T filesystems, disklabels, etc
To: David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk>
From: Daniel Carosone <dan@geek.com.au>
List: tech-kern
Date: 12/21/2002 10:10:18
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 06:33:29PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> The mbr extended partitions require more care.
> Correctly formatted, they are a linked list in increasing sector numbers.
> So if you allocate some free space (or free an extended partition)
> then the numbers of any partitions further down the extended one
> change.  This isn't really acceptable...

What does linux do?  So far as I know, hdaNN get allocated in a
numbering scheme not dissimilar to what's been proposed here.

Probably Linux is the most heavy user of extended partitions.
Just about everyone else has their own partition format, Windows
included (advanced disks).  Windows users tend not to subdivide
disks so much, either.

It's also the linux userbase that are most likely to be affected
by such repartitioning.  If the partitions renumber under linux,
there's no reason they shouldn't under NetBSD - in fact it might
even be worse if they don't.

--
Dan.