Re: Fun with Partition Tables and Zero's!!!

From: jayjwa (jayjwa_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/15/03 

Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:11:56 -0400

Eric Moors wrote:

> <linux/windows trouble>
>
> How did you repartition?
> What steps did you take(starting from an empty disk)?

I didn't really care about what was on the disk, so I just ended up
putting Linux first, its swap after that, then last Windows, which would
throw a fit and its fdisk was totally unusable at this point. I tried
about any way you can think of: win 1st, linux 2nd, primary part's,
logical part.s', any config at all. Really, I spent a good 6-7 hours
just trying to get both of these guys to fit on one disk together. I've
done win machines before, NT's, Macs, but Liux part is new, although I
did my homework on how it sees HD's. On my sys, it is /dev/hde- new,
clean. That I broke down (on one of many attempted config.'s) to
/dev/hde1 : windows, so it wouldn't freak, then /dev/hde5 : Linux
primary, /dev/hde6 : linux's swap. fdisk labeled these like this, and if
you tried to write any other partition than /dev/hde (notice- no number
after /hde) it would say it was writing and updating the table, but it
never actually did it. There is a program called cfdisk which comes with
this Linux too, it can cfdisk -P{r} /dev/hde, to show you the raw output
of the partition table, and that was how I figured out that it had gone
really wrong, as it had blanked over certain markers with zero's. A
partition table has special markers in it that must be there for
windows/dos to even think about looking at it (from my assembler
programming days). Linux's fdisk isn't as picky, and if I didn't have
this, I would be setting with a useless HD right now, (unless there's
another fdisk that can do the same as Linux's).

>
> It should have been :
>
> partition HDD for windows and linux
>
> install windows in hda1 (in windows terms C:)

You'd think it would be /dev/hda, but it's really /dev/hde, I posted
back a few days about my little mini-Linux distro being able to r/w to
it. /hda is invalid on this system. I learned that trying to install Debian.
>
> ###################################################################
> if your windows is an OEM version, it may ignore the partitiontable
> completely and occupy the entire disk. If so, use a FAT FS for windows
> and use parted (or Partition Magic if you have it) to resize the
> partition and the filesystem.
>
Who knows what's in this box? I got it second hand (really, a good deal,
because it was ahead of its time before, now just average) and have
since replaced some stuff inside, and I've found a new case for it
that'll let me fit my CD-RW in it (it kinda hangs out right now- had to
do some plastic surgery to get it to fit) If you haven't guess yet,
computers are mostly just fun and a hobby for me, I like to take them
apart and fix them up, install new OS's and programs...so it's really no
big loss if I spend a while trying to get Linux to run.

-Jay

> Create the partitions for linux. Again only if needed as this should
> preferably be done before the first OS is installed.
> ###################################################################
>
> install linux.
>
> Eric

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