Bug 142173 – fdisk creating incorect partition tables

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED NEEDINFO

[Description Darren 2006-07-30 05:37:34 UTC]

if you create a partition table in partition magic 8, dd the first 512 bytes of the disk, and do the same with fdisk in the 2006.0 amd64 livecd, and compair them, you will see that they are quite different near the end.

http://stashbox.org/uploads/1154173422/512.zip an example from each
http://rafb.net/paste/results/EirrCs39.html a comparason of each

The bug with the fdisk you used is that it doesn't ask the BIOS what it thinks about the disk in terms of CHS, but just charges ahead to use 16 heads - meaning the size of the disk would for booting be limited to less than 512MB

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-07-30 06:31:28 UTC]

Don't refer to pastebins in bug reports, ever. The links go dead in couple of days and the bug becomes completely useless.

[Comment 2 Darren 2006-07-30 06:35:25 UTC]

ok, here is what is in the pastebin.

fd:
partn type 0: 0x83 (Linux Native)  startsect: 0x0000003f, size: 0x0000c4a1 (~ 24.5MB)
partn type 1: 0x82 (Linux Swap)    startsect: 0x0000c4e0, size: 0x0006ebe0 (~221.5MB)
partn type 2: 0x83 (Linux Native)  startsect: 0x0007b0c0, size: 0x012bed40 (~  9.4GB)
partn type 3: 0x07 (NTFS)          startsect: 0x01339e00, size: 0x0d1c5140 (~104.9GB)
p0 start CHS: 0x01 01 00 (   0/ 1/ 1) end CHS: 0x0f 3f 31 (  49/15/63)
p1 start CHS: 0x00 01 32 (  50/ 0/ 1) end CHS: 0x0f 7f f3 ( 499/15/63)
p2 start CHS: 0x00 41 f4 ( 500/ 0/ 1) end CHS: 0x0f ff ff (1023/15/63)
p3 start CHS: 0x0f ff ff (1023/15/63) end CHS: 0x0f ff ff (1023/15/63)
 
pm:
partn type 0: 0x83 (Linux Native)  startsect: 0x0000003f, size: 0x0001b708 (~ 54.9MB)
partn type 1: 0x82 (Linux Swap)    startsect: 0x0001b747, size: 0x000fb040 (~502.0MB)
partn type 2: 0x83 (Linux Native)  startsect: 0x00116787, size: 0x02711676 (~ 19.5GB)
partn type 3: 0x07 (NTFS)          startsect: 0x02827dfd, size: 0x0bcd41e5 (~ 94.4GB)
p0 start CHS: 0x01 01 00 (   0/1/1) end CHS: 0xfe 3f 06 (   6/254/63)
p1 start CHS: 0x00 01 07 (   7/0/1) end CHS: 0xfe 3f 46 (  70/254/63)
p2 start CHS: 0x00 01 47 (  71/0/1) end CHS: 0xfe ff ff (1023/254/63)
p3 start CHS: 0x00 c1 ff (1023/0/1) end CHS: 0xfe ff ff (1023/254/63)

the disk is 120gb, its /dev/hda, i told both pm8 and fdisk to do 50mb, 500mb, 20gb, rest. pm8 apears to have done this properly, by looking at the bios, fdisk apears to have just gone off assuming.

[Comment 3 SpanKY 2006-07-31 22:28:56 UTC]

post the output of `fdisk -l` on the devices