Re: grub: mounting ext2fs on GNU/Hurd partitions.
On 9 Jul 1999, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Roland McGrath <frob@debian.org> writes:
>
> > We who wrote GNU/Hurd found it somewhat irritating that someone (we
> > know not who) decided to pick a random partition type number and
> > call it "GNU HURD". I'm sure it was done with the best of
> > intentions, but what its purpose or meaning is remains a mystery (to
> > me anyway) and seems to serve just to confuse well-meaning folks
> > like yourself.
>
> One day we may have a new filesystem format, which would probably be
> called the GNU Hurd filesystem format, and might well use that
> partition code. Regardless, it is always an error to use that code
> for an ext2fs partition, as Roland points out.
So how about putting a short notice into the GRUB FAQ, that might prevent
some newbies like me from falling into this trap. Like the following:
---[snip]---
diff -urN grub-0.5.91/docs/faq.html grub-0.5.91-dk2/docs/faq.html
--- grub-0.5.91/docs/faq.html Mon Feb 22 04:06:26 1999
+++ grub-0.5.91-dk2/docs/faq.html Mon Jul 12 10:39:00 1999
@@ -111,6 +111,15 @@
ext2fs</B> filesystems, plus a blocklisting notation for accessing blocks
directly. When using the normal file syntax, GRUB will autodetect the
filesystem type.<P>
+<B>NOTE:</B> In case you're wondering why GRUB refuses to mount the
+ext2fs of your GNU HURD installation, you might have been tempted to
+set the partition type to 0x63 ("GNU/Hurd"). This is wrong! Set it to
+0x83, commonly referred to as "Linux native", instead. The reason:
+Partition types indicate the type of filesystem they contain, regardless
+of the operating system. So partition type 0x83 would be more
+appropriately named something like "Ext2FS". 0x63 is just a reserved
+type for some possible, native GNU HURD filesystem (still to be
+written).<P>
<LI><B>When booting an OS, how do I tell the OS what the root
partition is?</B><P>
The root partition setting in GRUB is mostly for it's own use (where
---[snap]---
Regards,
Daniel.
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