Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 06:22:33 -0500 From: gemorga2 <gemorga2@vt.edu> To: Eugene Grosbein <eugen@www.svzserv.kemerovo.su>, Tony <tony@ubik.demon.co.uk> Cc: freebsd-fs <freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: [PATCH] msdosfs_vfsops.c: some kind of FAT32 incompatibility? Message-ID: <3C0CDBFD@zathras>
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I have tried a lot of partitioning schemes before I came up with my current
setup (PC-DOS 7.0, Windows NT, OS2 Warp 4.0, Windows NT Wkst 4.0, Freebsd 4.?,
Linux) I have never tried to have more than one Primary partition *visible*
in Windows 9x. I don't think that is what Primary partitions are intended for
since my boot manager always changes the other Primaries in my setup to Hidden
Primary (hidden filesystem?) on my computer. So using an extended partition
seems to be the right thing to do in this case. I am not sure why he had to
use Norton Utilities to create the partition though, but I probably would have
used Partition Magic so I guess I can't comment on that. This partition
marking and *linking* is interesting, but I'm not sure what benefit it is.
This sounds like a very special case which might deserve a quirk which could
be enabled on a per user basis, but I wouldn't enable it by default. BTW, my
current setup is:
Drive 0:
Primary Partition 1: FAT16 (IBM PC-DOS 7.0)
Primary Partition 2: NTFS (Windows NT Wkst 4.0)
Primary Partition 3: HPFS (OS2 Warp 4.0)
Primary Partition 4: FAT32 (Windows 98 -- used to be FAT16b Win95)
Drive 1:
Primary Partition 1: UFS/FFS FreeBSD 4.?
Primary Partition 2: EXT2 Linux
Only the two unix like OSes can read any of the other OSes filesystems in this
setup (with BootMagic). And, yes, I am nuts....
>On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 08:31:30AM +0000, Tony wrote:
>
>> >Once I decided to use some of this space for Windows95 residing
>> >at the beginning of drive but there was no standard tools to make it
>> >visible for Win95. So I used Norton Utilities 3.01 for Win95 and
>> >its Disk Editor to create new "Extended Partition" residing
>> >at the end of drive
>> I think you would have been better to create another Primary Partition.
>> Windows 9x and NT cannot create more than one Primary Partition on a
>> drive, but they are perfectly happy to use them.
>
>I tried to have another Primary but there are some problems.
>First, it is waste of last entry in MBR - this space really just
>does not need to be Primary. Second, there were some problems with
>disk checking tools I cannot remember now.
>Creating new Extended produced less troubles.
>
>> >and to link it to existing Extended Partition.
>> >Disk Editor has feature named 'Recalculate partition' that should
>> >guarantee correctness of new partition record.
>> This really sounds messy to your extended partition fragmented like
>> this. It will certainly cause problems with disk checking tools, as you
>> have found.
>
>At the other hand NDD worked just fine when that FAT32 needed fixes.
>
>> >The reason is that NDD changes the only byte in FAT32 signature:
>> >it changes BOOTSIG2 from 0 to 0x52. The filesystem is still usable
>> >by Windows but cannot be mounted by FreeBSD.
>> >Well, I can live with this, applying the following patch before each
>> >"buildworld". I just think that somebody else can hit this hole too.
>>
>> I think very few people will do anything similar to you with extended
>> partitions.
>>
>> On the other hand as NDD has a feature for tagging strange partitions
>> some other people may also find their FAT32 partitions ignored by
>> FreeBSD. I expect NDD is mostly right that the partition information
>> should be complained about, but if the user has been made aware and told
>> NDD to ignore it FreeBSD should ignore it too.
>>
>> >So I propose the patch that handles this situation.
>> >The patch is for RELENG_4 but that piece of code has not changed for
>> >long time so it should apply to CURRENT cleanly in spite of different
>> >file locations.
>> >
>> >diff -ur ./bootsect.h /usr/src/sys/msdosfs/bootsect.h
>> >--- ./bootsect.h Sat Aug 28 08:48:06 1999
>> >+++ /usr/src/sys/msdosfs/bootsect.h Mon Dec 3 22:27:13 2001
>> >@@ -69,6 +69,7 @@
>> > #define BOOTSIG0 0x55
>> > #define BOOTSIG1 0xaa
>> > #define BOOTSIG2 0
>> >+#define BOOTSIG2_COMPAT 0x52
>>
>> Please, please if this is committed comment clearly what this is for.
>
>I am not a committer but want people to say their pros and contras
>so it would be discussed if I find somebody to commit this.
>
>Eugene Grosbein
>
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