parted 1.4.20 and FreeDOS

[Karl Eichwalder]

Short description:

parted doesn't work for partitions created by FreeDOS's fdisk (beta7,
http://www.freedos.org):

    Using /dev/sda
    Error: Unable to open /dev/sda - unrecognised disk label.

Initially, FreeDOS' fdisk created 4 partitions on my 8 GB SCSI drive.
'parted' coming with SuSE Linux 7.3 wasn't able to deal with these
partitions.  Thus I decided to use fdisk v2.11i coming with SuSE Linux
7.3 to remove and all logical partions plus the extended partion on
'sda2' and did let Linux occupy all available disk space.  Later I
compiled parted-1.4.20 and issued the following commands.

Here's the info requested in the USER guide; if this isn't enough,
please ask for more info:

D42:~ # fdisk /dev/sda -l

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1115 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *         1       262   2104483+   6  FAT16
/dev/sda2           263      1115   6851722+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           263       264     16033+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           265       296    257008+  82  Linux swap
/dev/sda7           297      1115   6578586   83  Linux

D42:~ # fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1115.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1115 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *         1       262   2104483+   6  FAT16
/dev/sda2           263      1115   6851722+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           263       264     16033+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           265       296    257008+  82  Linux swap
/dev/sda7           297      1115   6578586   83  Linux

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1115 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl    Start     Size ID
 1 80   1   1    0 254  63  261       63  4208967 06
 2 00   0   1  262 254  63 1023  4209030 13703445 05
 3 00   0   0    0   0   0    0        0        0 00
 4 80   0   0    0   0   0    0        0        0 00
 5 00   1   1  262 254  63  263       63    32067 83
 6 00   1   1  264 254  63  295       63   514017 82
 7 00   1   1  296 254  63 1023       63 13157172 83

Expert command (m for help): 

Than parted prints:

D42:~ # parted
GNU Parted 1.4.20
Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Using /dev/sda
Error: Unable to open /dev/sda - unrecognised disk label.
Information: The operating system thinks the geometry on /dev/sda is
1115/255/63.  Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 8032.499M.
(parted) 

-- 
Linux frechet 2.4.7-4GB #1 Tue Jul 24 15:07:28 GMT 2001 i686 unknown
  5:31pm  up 35 days,  5:48, 11 users,  load average: 0.13, 0.07, 0.01
                                             work    :      address@hidden
Karl Eichwalder                              home    : address@hidden