Re: RFC: Changing default partition type for linux/ppc

On Sat, Jul 08, 2000 at 12:21:37AM +0200, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

quoted

My vote: let the kernel still look for Apple_UNIX_SVR2 the way it does
now.  Then I would like it to be able to use anything that starts with
"Linux".  That way people can name there parts types whatever they want,
but Linux_ext2 and Linux_swap should be defaults.

The kernel will be able to use anything. The only kernel change concerns
the root auto-detect stuff.

What will need to change, however, are the various distro installers,
pdisk, yaboot, perhaps quik, ...

i'd vote for "ext2", "hfs", etc. call them what they are, and keep it simple,
instead of "Linux_Ext2fs" or something similar.

imho, partition types should be a "soft" standard. eg, an installer should
default to only showing Apple_UNIX_SVR2 (or whatever standard partition
names are created) unless the user selects "show all" or similar option.
this is somewhat offtopic, though.

--
Tom Vier [off-list ref]
DSA Key id 0x27371A2C

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i'd vote for "ext2", "hfs", etc. call them what they are, and keep it simple,
instead of "Linux_Ext2fs" or something similar.

That won't work for 2 reasons:

 - MacOS and MacOS X won't mount HFS partitions if the type is not Apple_HFS
 - If we put the fs type (like Linux_ext2) in the partition type, it's
not updated
   by the various linux mkxxxx tools, and can be confusing. I would
rather keep
   a simple "Linux" type, along with "Linux_swap" to help skipping swap
partition
   in bootloaders (and installers)

Ben.

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