Re: [Sisuite-devel] PPC PReP Boot partition?

[Sean Dague]

On Sun, Sep 08, 2002 at 10:50:13PM -0500, Brian Finley wrote:
> Sean,
> 
> What is the filesystem type used on this partition?  Is it a standard
> FAT?

Eventually what happens is the kernel/ramdisk is dded to this partition
(there is no filesystem on it per say.)  Openfirmware detects type 41
partitions, and uses them as the possible location of boot kernels when it
brings up the box.  Because it is detected PRE OS boot, the type of the
partition is really important.
 
> Unfortunately, the version of parted that we are currently using doesn't
> allow you to specify arbitrary partition types, and the current list of
> supported types does not include 41, as you have discovered.
> 
> My guess is that unless a newer version of parted is available, that
> includes support for arbitrary partition types (I believe this was being
> considered), we will need to set this partition type outside of parted.

Any idea how recently or heavily this was being considered?  It would be
really nice to have this function there.

> This means that until parted adds this support, we may need to include
> sfdisk in the boel_binaries_tarball in PPC builds just for setting this
> partition type.
>
> Here's what the usage should look like:
> 
> 
>       sfdisk --change-id /dev/sda 1      41
> 
>         or
> 
>       sfdisk --change-id $disk    $minor 41

Ok, that solutions looks feasable in the short term.  However, in the long
term we are going to have to abstract out the disk partitioning tool
altogether, as Linux/s390 has its own partitioning tool for DASD (fdasd). 

        -Sean

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
                                
Sean Dague                address@hidden               http://dague.net

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors than
zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
_______________________________________________________________________

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