[Mageia-discuss] partitioning bug

Wed Jul 18 03:09:45 CEST 2012

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 8:37 AM, blind Pete <0123peter at gmail.com> wrote:
+> 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.
+
+But cfdisk is still based on CHS (or was few years ago).
+For example https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=630340#c1 says
+that 2.18 (the one in mageia 1) expected the size of the device to be
+a multiple of the cylinder size.
+
+> Even if partition four were past the end of the disk it would not
+> excuse cfdisk for complaining about partition three.
+
+Yes I don't know why it complains about 3 and not 4
+