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I was gonna ask what stars too. Yes, the '+' means that you have an
odd sector.<br>
<br>
I suppose the newer fdisks may deal directly in sectors rather than
cylinders, but remember that Primary Partition 1 shares space with
the MBR, and the first track of the disk is reserved as a Boot Code
Extension, so we're not totally away from CHS yet. Primary
Partitions [234] start at a Cylinder Boundary. I always start my
P1's ar Cylinder 2 so that they are the same size as P[234] as long
as they have the same number of cylinders.<br>
<br>
Logical Partitions are not handled correctly in fdisk...use the x
command followed by the p command and see that the Start offset of
all but the first LP is 63 rather than 16065. Disk Druid et al will
fix this for you during installation, but you are on your own later.<br>
<br>
JIM<br>
<br>
On 6/20/2011 3:08 PM, Walt Smith wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:257683.48979.qm@web120005.mail.ne1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255,
255); font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif;
font-size: 12pt;">
<div><br>
<span></span></div>
<div><span>Yes, I meant the "+". thanks.</span></div>
<div><br>
<span></span></div>
<div><span>and I suppose I picked on fdisk since as far as I
know, grub</span></div>
<div><span>provides no user info except some kinda map. IF
grub has</span></div>
<div><span>knowledge about the boots chain(s), perhaps a
boot_chain_print() method</span></div>
<div><span>could be added.</span></div>
<div><span></span></div>
<div>I suppose my 10 partitions on my FC6 drive was still before
fdisk was "fixed" ??<br>
Unless the one Windows install on it screwed up the fdisk
display.<br>
( by adding "+" 's).<br>
<br>
Way way way long ago, I had surmised that having a small
"normal" partition<br>
was the way for a boot to be easy. Of course Microsoft was
perceived to<br>
be owning the FAT technology at the time, so I didn't think it
could happen<br>
until some court ruled FAT wasn't MS's anymore.<br>
<br>
I've seen brief mention of uEFI once or twice.. as a bios
replacement ?<br>
Would like to see more about how it might work. Is it in
"product" now ?<br>
I mean, firmware has to start doing something at power-on no
matter what<br>
else is in the box. I guess having a ROM linux is the rage at
some places.<br>
But how different would a uEFI be ? Or did they just leave
out leggy stuff ?<br>
<br>
W.........<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Celebrating over 13,000 emails in my Yahoo Inbox !<br>
<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255);
margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;">
<div style="font-family: times new roman,new
york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">
<div style="font-family: times new roman,new
york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Arial"
size="2">
<hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b>
Bryan J Smith <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org"><b.j.smith@ieee.org></a><br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b>
Walt Smith <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:waltechmail@yahoo.com"><waltechmail@yahoo.com></a>;
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:calug@unknownlamer.org">"calug@unknownlamer.org"</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:calug@unknownlamer.org"><calug@unknownlamer.org></a><br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b>
Monday, June 20, 2011 1:25 PM<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b>
Disk alignment and boundaries -- WAS: Fedora upgrade<br>
</font><br>
Did you mean plus (+) instead of star (*)? The latter
is used for active (not <br>
required with Linux, or a non-Windows MBR).<br>
<br>
The problem is that 63/255 sectors/heads is
_non-aligned_. That's why one gets <br>
the plus (+) at times. The problem is the legacy
cylinder/heads/sectors (CHS) <br>
geometry.<br>
<br>
Newer fdisk versions in Linux distribution releases no
longer use CHS, but raw <br>
sectors -- be it 512b or 4KiB. This makes things easier
to deal with, and get <br>
perfect alignments. As I mentioned, I use 1GiB myself.<br>
<br>
As far as boot chain, that has nothing to do with
fdisk. Fdisk is not even <br>
related to such. The boot chain is dynamic in GRUB,
handled and generated at <br>
boot-time. And Windows has an extremely dumb boot
approach to complicate <br>
matters in dual-boot.<br>
<br>
uEFI could have solved it better than it did. But so
far, it's just doing what <br>
ARC did prior. You have a FAT slice where you locate
boot loaders. It is read <br>
dynamically, but the rest of the boot is handled as
before.<br>
<br>
I will say one thing. At least with Linux, you can
address boot issues. With <br>
NT, you're f'd if it dorks up, which has been the case
with some bare metal <br>
Windows systems of ours on uEFI.<br>
<br>
________________________________<br>
From: Walt Smith <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
ymailto="mailto:waltechmail@yahoo.com"
href="mailto:waltechmail@yahoo.com">waltechmail@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Sent: Mon, June 20, 2011 10:32:06 AM<br>
<br>
I've always been NOT happy with the little stars that
show<br>
in fdisk displaying partition sizes. (I'm not
complaining about fdisk per se..<br>
I think it was a good idea to display the info ). <br>
<br>
Windows seems to want more precise<br>
boundaries, or used to.. Haven't tried anything lately
though.<br>
<br>
But Bryans suggestion is a good one: and I would
add/amplify:<br>
<br>
There should be a way to make ( create ) nice partition
boundaries<br>
to make the "star" go away ( rather than some user
calculation on<br>
a note pad ): either an option in fdisk or <br>
a separate tool. (you'll notice I'm not detailing the
meaning<br>
of "star"). I never got it down quite perfect why
other OS's<br>
needed some boundary and others didn't. ... I believe
there<br>
was some discussion ( on another list ??)<br>
regarding some defect in fdisk. I'm not sure there was
a defect so much as<br>
it's design was to simply make the part size exactly as
the user told <br>
<br>
it to. Although perhaps round-down was a problem if the
size entered<br>
was "mega-something byte" rather than 123 sectors...
sector boundary ???<br>
<br>
Also, fdisk allowed more than one partition to be marked
"bootable".<br>
I don't have an explanation for that. I'd like to see
that fixed if<br>
theres not a reason. Perhaps a marker for each
partition part of the boot chain <br>
<br>
??<br>
<br>
An fdisk display also does not show the boot chain.<br>
There have been times when I'd simply forget what the
boot sequence<br>
was and have to trace it again.. I mean the path thru
the partitions,<br>
not the kernel boot vmlinuz.<br>
<br>
If the boot is straight from MBR, there could be a
simple text display<br>
showing:<br>
MBR => /dev/hda2<br>
<br>
if the boot is chained, <br>
<br>
MBR => /dev/hda1 => /dev/hda5 ( primary
partition )<br>
<br>
MBR= > /dev/hda4(LBA) => /dev/hda6 <br>
<br>
( chain is on partition of LBA, where LBA is
encapsulation for logical hda6,7,8 <br>
)<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
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