disk partitions and special partition IDs

[Stephan Hermann]

Hi Steffen, others,

On Wednesday 24 May 2006 16:11, Steffen Grunewald wrote:
> On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 01:46:55PM +0200, Stephan Hermann wrote:
> > Hi Guys,
> >
> > as you all know when you want to format a disk partition with >300GB you
> > need to set the EFI GPT id (0xEE).
>
> I didn't know this before, and therefore set up a few disks in the usual
> way:
>
> Disk /dev/hdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hdb1               1       60801   488384001   83  Linux
>
> Could you please elaborate where the problem is?

Sure...by default fdisk/cfdisk and sfdisk is setting the label to msdos, that 
means, that nobody is able to create a partition >301GB.
We were trying to partition and format a 6.3TB partition (don't ask why), and 
every single time it was created with 301GB.
I found then the setting for EFI GPT partition id...and then we were able to 
create partitions >301GB..

But setting different IDs e.g. EE (EFI GPT) or other non usual IDs is somehow 
not directly supported with the setup_disk* tool.

> > Sadly I'm missing this possibility in /usr/sbin/setup_harddisks.
>
> I've been missing for a long time the ability to assign proper partition
> ids to non-DOSishly partitioned disks (e.g. on Alpha architecture)...

Yes, with this addition it should give you this possibility.

Furthermore, we are adding support for creating disk_configs in megabyte, but 
calculating the result not in sectors but in cylinders, because all *fdisk 
utils are having problems with number length >9 numerics and 6.3TB is a 
number with a length of 11 numerics, which isn't handled properly by sfdisk 
in this very special case.

\sh