Discussion:
Question about partitions
(too old to reply)
Dave M
2005-11-21 06:22:20 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

I have a very vague, general question about paritions. Just for fun, I ran
a couple of commands. First was:

fdisk -l /dev/hda

and I got more or less what I expected:

Disk /dev/hda: 12.0 GB, 12072517632 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1467 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 608 4883728+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 609 1427 6578617+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 1428 1467 321300 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 1428 1467 321268+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
-------------------------
Then, just to see what would happen, I ran:

fdisk -l /dev/hda*

Which gave me rather more:

Disk /dev/hda: 12.0 GB, 12072517632 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1467 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 608 4883728+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 609 1427 6578617+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 1428 1467 321300 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 1428 1467 321268+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hda1: 5000 MB, 5000937984 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 607 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1p4 128454 128456 19911 0 Empty
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(0, 0, 0) logical=(128453, 1, 61)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(0, 0, 0) logical=(128455, 124, 3)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Disk /dev/hda2: 6736 MB, 6736504320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 819 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/hda2 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/hda5: 328 MB, 328978944 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/hda5 doesn't contain a valid partition table

--------------

So I guess my questions are, for anyone who cares to answer them:
1. What is the mysterious 2-unit partition 4? There was no partition 4
when I partitioned the drive when I was installing Debian a month ago...
and it doesn't show up in the fdisk -l /dev/hda at all...

2. What are the units for start/end? If I've read this right, my partition
4 is 16MB. (?)

25. I just noticed this: my drive seems to have 1467 "units", since that's
where partition 5 ends. And, at ~8MB per unit, that gives me about a 12 GB
drive, which is correct. So what's up with Partition 4 starting at unit
128454?!? That would put my drive in the terabyte range ... hehe.

3. Should I be concerned that partitions 2 and 5 (my Linux partitions)
don't "contain a valid partition table"? I guess I'm not sure why fdisk is
telling me that... I mean, everything works...

Thanks,
Dave

p.s. Am I posting this in the right place? Are there other good places for
something like this? I'm just finding my sea legs in the Linux world...
Mark Hobley
2005-11-21 08:08:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave M
3. Should I be concerned that partitions 2 and 5 (my Linux partitions)
don't "contain a valid partition table"? I guess I'm not sure why fdisk is
telling me that... I mean, everything works...
fdisk is a disk partitioning tool. fdisk /dev/hda is the correct thing to do.

hda1, hda2, hda3, hda4, hda5, etc are partitions, not disks !!!

So they don't have a partition table, and there is no need to fdisk them !!

Regards,

Mark.
--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Telephone: (0121) 247 1596
International: 0044 121 247 1596

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/
Loading...