Subject: Re: Why aren't partitions limited to fit within the device?
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@free.fr>
Cc: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, aeb@cwi.nl,
       Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
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Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:54:32 +0100
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Ar Llu, 2006-10-16 am 09:28 +0200, ysgrifennodd Xavier Bestel:
> > Hmmm.. So Alan things a partially-outside-this-disk partition
> > shouldn't show up at all, and Andries thinks it should.
> > And both give reasonably believable justifications.
> 
> Maybe the whole part table should be marked as "weird" to let userspace
> run a diagnostics/repair tool on the disk.

I actually like the "read only" suggestion that was made. Allow data
access but protect from damage.

Both options will allow 'repair' of a broken partition table as the
partition will show up in fdisk which accesses stuff directly, and when
that causes a revalidate it will re-appear to the kernel.

Incidentally the question of exactly what libata should do about HPA
handling also needs sorting out.

Alan

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