Bug#237152: Ultra Enterprise 450 installation report

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.cx>]

Ummm...

About the partitions limit: I found this in fdisk/fdisksunlabel.h (in
source package util-linux): 

typedef struct {
   /* (... Many parameters before it) */
   struct sun_partition {
	  uint32_t start_cylinder;
	  uint32_t num_sectors;
   } partitions[8];
   unsigned short magic;      /* Magic number */
   unsigned short csum;       /* Label xor'd checksum */
} sun_partition;

And in the Kernel tree (2.6.3), in fs/partitions/sun.c:

int sun_partition(struct parsed_partitions *state, struct block_device *bdev)
{
        /* ... */
        struct sun_disklabel {
	        /* Once again, lots of other parameters... */
		struct sun_partition {
		       __u32 start_cylinder;
		       __u32 num_sectors;
                } partitions[8];
		unsigned short magic;      /* Magic number */
		unsigned short csum;       /* Label xor'd checksum */
        } * label; 

So... Well, even if the Sun disklabel allows (or so they say) for more
partitions, it doesn't look like we will be able to do so without
changes to important parts of code that (I think ;-) ) were written
like that for a reason. 

I will look also into this, but I think that only the disk we will
boot from requires a proper Sun disklabel. Maybe the installer could
suggest using a different type of disklabel if it is not going to be
the boot disk.

...Let me check how this is managed by the BSDs. I am sure I installed
OpenBSD once in a Sparc with over 10 partitions.

Greetings,

-- 
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.cx - (+52-55)5630-9700 ext. 1366
PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23
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