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

On Sun, Jul 09, 2000 at 11:33:09PM +0200, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

quoted

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

you're right. i was just giving examples of names and hfs popped into my
head.

 - 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)

i'm not sure what you're saying. mkfs doesn't touch partition tables.

i was thinking of partition types as more of a description of the fs, rather
than naming them after the OS that uses them. on pcs, linux uses the same
partition type for all file systems (except for swap). it wouldn't be a bad
idea to do the same, as you seem to be saying. "Linux_swap" as a type does
seem a little redundant to me, since the partition name can be set to
"swap". on pc/dos style partitions they use a seperate type for for swap,
but they also don't have a seperate name field.

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

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On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, Tom Vier wrote:

quoted

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)

i'm not sure what you're saying. mkfs doesn't touch partition tables.

That's the problem. If we create a partition with the label "ext2" and
later use mkfs to change the filesystem on that partition, the label stays
and is misleading.

Because people don't always change their partition tables when they switch
filesystems or operating systems, any label is liable to become
inconsistant with the actual disk state. Therefore, these type labels
should be used only as hints to bootloaders and installers and such; there
should always be a way to ignore them.


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