[Mageia-discuss] partitioning bug

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...  
+
+