Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263775AbTK2Npz (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Nov 2003 08:45:55 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263776AbTK2Npz (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Nov 2003 08:45:55 -0500 Received: from 81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk ([81.2.122.30]:14722 "EHLO 81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263775AbTK2NpS (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Nov 2003 08:45:18 -0500 Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 13:50:00 GMT From: John Bradford Message-Id: <200311291350.hATDo0CY001142@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk> To: Andries Brouwer , Szakacsits Szabolcs Cc: Andrew Clausen , Apurva Mehta , Linux Kernel Mailing List , bug-parted@gnu.org In-Reply-To: <20031129123451.GA5372@win.tue.nl> References: <20031128045854.GA1353@home.woodlands> <20031128142452.GA4737@win.tue.nl> <20031129022221.GA516@gnu.org> <20031129123451.GA5372@win.tue.nl> Subject: Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Let me continue to stress: geometry does not exist. > Consequently, it cannot change. > fdisk does not set any geometry, it writes a partition table. > > Start and size of each partition are given twice: in absolute sector > units (LBA) and in CHS units. The former uses 32 bits, and with 512-byte > sectors this works up to 2TB. People are starting to hit that boundary now. > The latter uses 24 bits, which works up to 8GB. Modern systems no longer > use it (but the details are complicated). Why don't we take the opporunity to make all CHS code configurable out of the kernel, and define a new, more compact, partition table format which used LBA exclusively, and allowed more than four partitions in the main partition table? I know it sounds pointless to define a new partitioning scheme when there are so many already in existance, but for dedicated Linux machines, only being able to define four partitions without resorting to 'extended' partitions, which store there partitioning data in other parts of the disk, is a needless limitation. We could also ensure that there is sufficient magic in the partition table to make identifying it easy and reliable. John. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/