Andries Brouwer wrote:
>On Thu, May 04, 2000 at 07:56:26PM -0400, benr@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
>: >"portable"?
>: >You are not referring to DOS-type partition tables, are you?
>: >Nobody knows what they are.
>: >DOS, Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, Solaris and Linux each interpret
>: >things in a slightly different way.
>:
>: Well, I don't know about Solaris, and I won't presume to speak for
Linux,
>: but DOS, Windoze, NT, and OS/2 all interpret partition tables in the
same
>: way. The format and structure of these partitions tables is well known
(I
>: wrote all of the disk partitioning code used in the OS/2 Logical Volume
>: Management System. This code has been in use in-house for about 2 years,
>: and has been in the field for over a year, and there have been no
reported
>: compatibility issues. I guess this means I got at least part of it
right!
>: ;) ).
>
>Don't be too optimistic. Some years ago, when I tried to
>install OS/2 Warp 3.0 on my 5 disk system that already had
>Linux and FreeBSD, the OS/2 FDISK crashed and the install
>failed.
Warp 3.0 was released 5 1/2 years ago, well before my time. Much has
changed since then (hopefully for the better). The new disk partitioning
code I wrote went into the OS/2 LVMS, which was released in Warp Server for
e-business in May 1999.
>I found several bugs in this FDISK and tried to
>contact some IBM person responsible for FDISK but failed.
>So, if you do not get complaints it may just be that they
>don't reach you.
I agree, this is possible. Its also possible that the people installing
the new product are installing it over an older version of the product, in
which case no partition changes are needed, and the new code never gets
used. All I can say is, since the new partitioning code was released, no
problems have been reported to me. Ignorance is bliss, eh? ;)
>
>About "in the same way" - of course roughly speaking they do,
>but there are lots of tiny differences.
>
>About "well known" - as far as I know, no documentation exists.
>I would be very interested if you had a formal description
>of DOS-type partition tables.
Let me see what I can get my hands on and get approved for release.
>On the other hand, you can
>find my formal description at
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_tables.html
>(but I have to warn you that I recently discovered another
>small difference between Linux and DOS behaviour, so the
>description given there is not 100% correct for DOS).
I would be very interested in your description, and especially in any
differences you have found between the handling of partitions between the
various operating systems. Knowledge is power, and I take every
opportunity I can to learn. If only I could remember it all ... :)
>Comments are welcome.
>Andries
Regards,
Ben
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