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Re: general partition questions


From: B.Hakvoort
Subject: Re: general partition questions
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 12:08:16 +0100

Hi all :)

On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 14:52 +0000, paddy wrote: 
<snip>
> dd is a fundamental tool.  But, it really doesn't do much more than put 
> bells and whistles around read(2) and write(2).  A few thoughts:
> 
Which makes me wonder.. What if i don't use 'dd' and implement something simple 
myself:

-----PSEUDOCODE-----------------
INPUT = /dev/hda1
OUTPUT = /dev/hda2

while ( INPUT .read_byte( c ) )
        OUTPUT .write_byte( c ) ;
--------------------------------------

Afaics this should work.. any disadvantages i should be aware of?
One huge advantage of this approach is the fact i can implement some excellent 
progressfeedback.

> 
>       1. large file support has been variable in the past
How large is large? I've been able to test it with 10Gb (no bigger disks 
available) without problems.
Some googling didn't show up much usefull either. Maybe you could elaborate a 
bit? Thanks! :)


On Sat, 2004-11-13 at 00:51 +0100, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote: 
> Independently whatever you use for bit-to-bit copy, if the partition is
> used for booting then people may end up having an unbootable system,
> depending on the bootloader, filesystems. Solutions are different for the
> different cases.
> 
I take it the 'source partition' remains unaffected? So this only happens when 
people try to boot
from a fresh copied partition? I think i'll settle with a warning then. (Maybe 
a FAQ entry if too
many complains start rolling in ;) )

> Probably you should be aware also that kernels earlier than 2.6 couldn't
> read the last sectors of partitions if it was odd thus people lost that
> sector, being filesystem data, gpt, ntfs backup boot sector or whatever
> else.
> 
Hmmz, sounds more serious.. Another warning may be appropiate :)


Another question:
When at least one partition on a device is mounted (or active in case of swap) 
this device is considered 'busy'
And it's not possible to do anything with newly created partitions on this 
device.
(they don't show up in /dev/ and /proc/partitions)
At least.. this is the case with fdisk.. 
I've noticed it's possible to create a new partition on a busy device with
parted and it gets properly listed in /dev/ and /proc/partitions.

This is great, but makes me wonder how parted accomplishes this? And how 
reliable is this?
Will it also work on older kernels etc..
Some insights would be appreciated

Thanks for reading :)

Bart
-- 
www.titanium-it.nl --- Open Minded Open Source
www.heavenisopen.com <-----Another Source





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