Re: Does libparted suport Hybrid MBR

[Petr Uzel]

Hi,

On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 08:09:34AM +0530, rahul dev wrote:
> Guys,
> 
>    Just want to know if there is support for hybrid MBR in libparted? 

No, 'vanilla' (lib)parted does not support writing hybrid MBRs. However,
at least Ubuntu and openSUSE have patches to add some basic support
for hybrid MBR.

>    How would libparted interpret a hybrid MBR partition table ?

Hybrid MBR is in no way standardized and so various tools create
different hybrid MBRs for the same set of GPT partitions. If I create
hybrid MBR using openSUSE's patched parted and then run 'vanilla'
parted on it, it recognizes it as GPT without any problems. However,
if I create new GPT partition with vanilla parted, it overwrites
hybrid MBR and creates non-hybridized protective MBR instead.

For fine control over how the hybrid MBR is created, I suggest to use
GPT fdisk tool:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/index.html

BTW this is worth reading:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html

HTH,


Petr

--
Petr Uzel
IRC: ptr_uzl @ freenode

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