[Mageia-discuss] partitioning bug

Sun Jul 8 07:39:46 CEST 2012

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
+Sig goes here...  
+
+