[Mageia-discuss] partitioning bug

[blind Pete]

andre999 wrote:

> blind Pete a écrit :
>> David W. Hodgins wrote:
>>
>>    
>>> On Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:03:34 -0400, blind Pete
>>> <0123peter at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>> Morgan Leijström wrote:
>>>>        
>>>>> It would also be interesting to know what other tools say.
>>>>> gparted?
>>>>>          
>>>      
>>>> Gparted looks pretty.  As far as I can see, gparted agrees
>>>> with what I think things should look like.  Gparted and
>>>> fdisk agree about the number of sectors.  (More than you
>>>> get by multiplying CxHxS.)
>>>>        
>>> Interesting.  I guess it would be best to use 'hdparm -i /dev/sda|grep
>>> LBAsects" to find out the number of sectors.
>>>
>>> Regards, Dave Hodgins
>>>      
>> [root at live ~]# hdparm -i /dev/sda | grep LBA
>>   CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=1953523055
>> [root at live ~]#
>>
>> Same number of sectors as gparted and fdisk report.  Number of heads
>> and sectors per cylinder are just, "it's a big disk".  _Posssibly_
>> number of cylinders gives a clue about how big.  H can be 63 or 255,
>> depending on mood, and CxHxS should be a little less than max LBA.
>>
>> The situation just got worse.  The latest work arround is to lie
>> about how big a sector is.  That is called "advanced" formatting.
>>
>>    
> Coming into this a little late, but I read somewhere that cfdisk was to
> avoid, because of unsolved bugs which could result in disk corruption.
> That was a while back, but apparently it still applies.

That would be disturbing.  BTW I'm using old software, Mageia 1.  

But to be fair, in this case cfdisk's only crime seems to be that it 
is refusing to look at a valid partition.  The main suspect is 
still the Mageia 2 installer.  

> BTW, with all those partitions, I would convert your disk to GPT tables
> instead of MBR, using gdisk.
> (gdisk is in core.)

OK I have installed gdisk and will look at it.  How would you rate 
it for maturity?  And what else can recognize a gpt disk?  
Grub?
Grub2?
Lilo?
The Mageia installer?
Other installers?
Other operating systems?

> It will make your disk more stable.
> It uses a 128 partition table,with a backup table at the end of the drive.
> No such thing as "extended" partitions.
> It takes less space than the ms-compatible MBR partition tables.
> The only trick is that you need to leave space for the backup table (34
> 512-byte sectors).
> If you change your mind, you can convert back painlessly.
> I've used GPT for over 2 years, including converting back and forth a
> few times at first.
> 
> To convert, you'll have to boot to a live disk, preferably with gdisk.
> I use systemRescueCD for that. http://www.sysresccd.org/
> The latest stable version is 379 Mib, usable from CD or USB key.
> I don't know if a Mageia live cd, or Mageia DVD in rescue mode might work.

In Mageia 1 the installer pulled it from the net rather than from 
the local iso, so it was not prepackaged.  

> Just in case you might be interested

I'm interested.  

> Regards :)
> 

-- 
blind Pete
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