Bug#80325: Re: Bug#80325: how compact, vanilla and fdisk see the partition table

[Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com>]

Part of the confusion is that cfdisk and fdisk, apparently, can or
else can not read BSD partitions the same, no matter what kernel is
compiled with.  In other words, they have their own built-in support
for reading the partitions.

I didn't even realize that until someone told me on IRC.

> When I invoke 'view partition table', the installer reports the BSD
> slices as 'BSD4.2' partitions, no matter if it uses the 'vanilla' or
> the 'compact' kernel flavor.

This makes sense also, since dbootstrap (the installer) uses libfdisk,
which, like *fdisk, has it's own partition table support.

> 1) reported all the slices in the BSD partition, regardless of the
> kernel flavor used.

Right, that makes sense.  Was 'fdisk -l' output the same not matter
what kernel as well?  It should be.

> 2) when using the 'compact' flavor, reported the extended partition as
> containing just the Linux swap partition (/dev/sda9) while ignoring all
> the native Linux partitions (sda10, 11, 12 and 13, in the installer's
> nomenclature)

> 3) when using the 'vanilla' flavor, reported all the logical Linux
> partitions on the extended partition as (/dev/sda9, 10, 11, 12 and 13),
> as expected.

Hmm.  Do you think this is because the vanilla kernel has BSD
disklabel support and idepci/compact does not?  

I don't understand this but that's the only variable between the two.
And if vanilla is doing the right thing bug compact/idepci is not,
then perhaps those kernels need to be rebuilt!

-- 
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>