From owner-freebsd-current Sun Mar 26 22:42:12 1995 Return-Path: current-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id WAA05782 for current-outgoing; Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:42:12 -0800 Received: from gndrsh.aac.dev.com (gndrsh.aac.dev.com [198.145.92.241]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id WAA05769 for ; Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:42:09 -0800 Received: (from rgrimes@localhost) by gndrsh.aac.dev.com (8.6.8/8.6.6) id WAA13215; Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:39:06 -0800 From: "Rodney W. Grimes" Message-Id: <199503270639.WAA13215@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> Subject: Re: Slice errors To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:39:06 -0800 (PST) Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, freebsd-current@freefall.cdrom.com, jc@irbs.com In-Reply-To: <199503270626.QAA09705@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Mar 27, 95 04:26:49 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1992 Sender: current-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > >> >Use fdisk -u to correct the partition table so that size==size of > >> >your BSD c or d partition and things should be fine. What you see > >> >above is the bogus partition table that gets installed if you install > >> >new boot blocks. > >> > >> This advice no longer applies. The bogus partition table is specially > >> handled to make it work. Changing it risks introducing bugs and > >> changes will be blown away by new boot blocks. > > >That advise got the chap up and running from private email I got > >back from him. And he now has given me a patch for fdisk that > >fixes some real stupid errors (writting 0 as a value for beginning > >sector if you let it calculate the beg/end C/H/S addresses). > > I introduced that bug :-(. There was no way to delete a partition > using fdisk. There is still no way to clear all the active flags. > Setting the size AND the base of a partition should clear everything. > (It's convenient to have empty partitions with a nonzero base. It > stops some (braindamaged) systems from reordering the partition > numbers.) Yes there was a way to delete partitions using fdisk, I've been using it to do that for a very long time. You had to say ``y'' to the specify beg/end C/H/S and manual set them all to zero. Your changes serously broke the usability of fdisk in that it now always writes a very invalid partition if the user lets fdisk pick the beg/end values :-(. You want to fix it or should I? > >I am using that advice here on all my machines and it is much happier > >about this than allowing the bogus 500000 block boot stuff live!!! > > I want the invalid table to just work. I tested it, but only on a > floppy, so I want to see more bug reports about it if there are any > bugs. You won't see any from me on it, I always run with a valid partition table. -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation Company Custom computers for FreeBSD