[Mageia-discuss] partitioning bug

blind Pete 0123peter at gmail.com
Fri Jul 6 09:37:47 CEST 2012


David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Thu, 05 Jul 2012 05:10:30 -0400, blind Pete
> <0123peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Cfdisk is very unhappy about something.
>>
>>     FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partition begins after
>>     end-of-disk Press any key to exit cfdisk
>>
>> It looks like cfdisk's error message is wrong.  Partition 3 is mounted
>> and in use.
> 
>> Disk /dev/sda: 121601 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
>> Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
>> DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
>> Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0
> 121601x255x63=1953520065

CHS has not been reliable since zones were introduced decades ago.  
They are just a general hint that it is a big drive.  LBA or 
sector number is all that matters.  What happens inside the HDD 
case is an unknowable mystery.  

Even if partition four were past the end of the disk it would not 
excuse cfdisk for complaining about partition three.  

<----cut-n-paste---->
[root at live ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000203804160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953523055 sectors
<----cut-n-paste---->

>>    Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
>> /dev/sda1   *        63 577440359  577440297   5  Extended
>> /dev/sda2     577440360 1562899589  985459230  83  Linux
>> /dev/sda3     1562899590 1953520064  390620475  83  Linux
>> /dev/sda4     1953520065 1953523054       2990  83  Linux
> 
> What is in sda4?  

An ext2 file system, a LiLo map file and a lilo.conf file.  

> It starts one sector past the end of the drive.

Not according to fdisk, although sfdisk was silent about 
the total number of sectors. 

> Regards, Dave Hodgins

-- 
blind Pete
Sig goes here...  



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