Re: Adding support for HP Service Partition GUID for GPT

[Andrew Clausen]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 07:47:15PM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2002  16:54 +1100, Andrew Clausen wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 07:03:05PM +0000, Richard Hirst wrote:
> > >   HP have defined a Service Partition GUID for their ia64 systems.  It
> > > is a partition with FAT filesystem, holding various diagnostic and
> > > configuration tools (like compaq-diag, dell-diag, etc).
> > 
> > Any objections to having pairs of flags instead?  i.e. have a
> > compaq and a diag flag.  If you set compaq on, it will also set
> > diag on (unless, say, "sleep" was already on).
> > 
> > That way we get a few less flags...
> > 
> > So, we would have, presumebly:
> > 
> >     company: hp, compaq, dell, (award?)
> >     type: sleep, diag
> 
> Well, there are at least 3 sleep partition types (dell, ms-apm, pheonix)
> which makes it really ugly.

Why?  Just have:

        company: ms, dell, compaq, phoenix
        type: sleep diag

(And you must have exactly one of each, or none at all)

> I think the "named partition type" support
> is exactly for this kind of problem.

Right.  It's describing the CONTENT, not some kind of meta-attribute.
However, we're talking about 1.4.x here.  Maye this problem isn't
worth solving for 1.4.x?

> Define "hp-diag" as a GPT
> partition type and be done with it.  Otherwise, you will quickly run out
> of flags.

It's O(# of big companies), which isn't that big (scary thought!)

> Presumably, just like you have a "set flags" command, you could also
> have a "set type" command to override the default partition type.

Right.  Another option would be to accept "type" wherever you
accept "file systems".  (And to print the type when you can't
probe a file system, in the "print" command)

This raises an issue: is it possible to detect these diag
partitions?  I guess they are "just FAT".  They are identified
purely by their partition type.

In this case, the "type" is really being used as a label.
Andreas: should libblkid use it?

Andrew