On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 06:37:18AM +0400, Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:
> >> 3: Ext. partition - LBA (sysid 15)
> >>    start 37817010, size 40307085 (19681 MB, Cyls 2354-4863)
> >
> >I think the contents of the above are what confuses it.
> >(Which you didn't give)
> 
> Sorry, a typo from me. When I wrote E4 in my earlier mail, it was
> actually E3. There is *no* E4.
> 
> The E3 link says its unused. Its start is same as that of the E2 link.

Yes, but what about sector 37817010 ?

> Question: what do the "link" entries mean btw? :)

If you run 'fdisk -vvv' (rather than just the 'fdisk -vv' you gave the
output from) you see a bit more of the gory details of how extended
partitions are defined.

Basically the 'extended' partition slot of the main mbr (partition 3
in your output) has the (much) same structure as the disk itself.
However the partition tabe is constained to a maximum of two entries,
the first of which describes a data partition (typically offset be 63
sectors), and the second another extended partition.  This then repeats
for each extended partition.

Although the structure looks capable of a 4-way branching tree, in fact it
is a linked list.

There is also a minor inconsistency in when the various sector numbers
are counted from (and I haven't hand-checked those, but fdisk doesn't
seem to be confused.

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk