Re: [opensuse] grub no longer being maintained? so Suse drops support for XFS boot?

On 2009/06/14 17:42 (GMT+0200) Carlos E. R. composed:

On Sunday, 2009-06-14 at 15:33 (GMT+0200), jdd wrote:

Carlos E. R. a écrit :

of course yes. I just verified this is a YaST option, and I use it
just now

You must be using some type of trick. Somebody tried it in the Spanish
list and we couldn't make it work.

You mean YaST must be using some kind of trick? It's been in the YaST
bootloader installation menu as long as I can remember.

Info grub says:
...
so extended is possible...

Above says nothing about extended. Notice, I mean extended, not logical.
Above is talking about logical, mistaking them for extended. There can be
only one extended partition in any disk, not four.

And docs are always perfect and complete? I think not.

Three types:

- primary, only four possible.
- extended, it is one of the possible types for one of the primaries.
Only one primary can be defined as extended.
- logical, number unlimited. All the logical occupy the space assigned to
the extended partition.

The extended partition "contains" no space, can not be formatted, can not
store anything - except the logical partitions, as a linked list.

Actually it usually does have a significant number of unused sectors that
cannot be allocated to any specific partition or partitions.

`xfs_stage1_5'
...
While Stage 2 cannot generally be embedded in a fixed area as the
size is so large, Stage 1.5 can be installed into the area right
after an MBR, or the boot loader area of a ReiserFS or a FFS.

Exactly!
Notice that the extended partition has no space after its "boot" sector,
so there is no space for stage 1.5

After its boot sector is exactly where an extended normally has a significant
number of empty sectors, typically 239 or 254, often quite a bit less.

Look:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb3 15 4865 38965657+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 15 3679 29439081 83 Linux

Both hdb3 and hdb5 start on the same track - so if you put anything on the
start of hdb3 it could overwrite hdb5.

Both hdb3 & hdb5 start on the same _cylinder_ (15 above), *not* on the same
track. A logical's boot (first usable) sector is at the start of the _second_
track of whatever cylinder it starts on, same as a primary partition at the
very start of a disk. This is unlike other primary partitions, which need no
EBR/MBR sector to waste a track-minus-one-sector as logicals and first
primaries do.

I suspect the problem with sometimes XFS/Grub incompatibility has to do with
lack of usused space at the "start" of an XFS partition, referred to in your
Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:04:33 +0200 post in this thread, when the XFS partition
is neither a first primary nor a logical. In those cases there is no
track-minus-one-sector of empty space preceding the partition's boot sector
to provide a home for Grub code.

I find a lot of this thread to be rather humorous. Having a small EXT2 for
/boot offers potential to avoid so many different kinds of problems that I
find arguments against having one on a system with legacy PC BIOS a silly
waste of time.
--
"Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to
the sky like an eagle." Proverbs 23:5 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
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