Re: partition names

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.demon.co.uk>]

>   This is a correct table:
> 
> Linux   GRUB    Mach/Hurd (ext2fs)   Mach/Hurd (ufs)
> 
> hda     (hd0)   hd0                  hd0
> hda1    (hd0,0) hd0s1                hd0a
> hda2    (hd0,1) hd0s2                hd0b
> 
>   The questions of device-naming are too many. Is it better to change
> how to name devices? Especially, the difference between ext2fs
> partition and ufs partition is confusing for Hurd beginners.

So what is the difference? I thought that ufs is a file system, like
ext2fs, so how can the way of naming a partition depend on a file
system?

And where do BSD partitions fit into the scheme of things? And what is
a "slice"?

"Mr White" wrote: "But for example a /dev/hdc disk on linux on a system
where there is no /dev/hdb (i.e. two master disks, no slaves), grub
would call it (hd1)."

This is very interesting. When I was trying boot GRUB by manipulating
the device number I tried 0x82, as my IDE floppy is /dev/hdc. But I
don't have a /dev/hdb, so should this, perhaps, have been 0x81? (It
probably still wouldn't have worked, because 0xff, meaning "use the
same boot device" didn't work, but this knowledge might be useful later
...)

What about the other kinds of partition names? Do any of them not count
missing devices? (Sounds like a bad way of doing things to me: what if
you have a device that the BIOS sometimes detects and sometimes
doesn't; this sort of thing happens a lot.)

Edmund