Partition 4; different phys/log endings

[Barry Masterson <jbarrm@panix.com>]

I have previously been running linux on an old 386DX33 with a Quantum
Lightning 540meg ide drive. Because the bios in the 386 was so old,
I had to cheat/fool the bios by telling it the drive was smaller than
it really was in order to accept this large drive:

	type 47
	cyls        heads        wp      lz      sect     size
	1024         16          0       1024     63       504

I now have a 486DX2-66, with a more current bios, so I can tell it the
truth:

	type user
	cyls      heads     wp       lz      sect     size   lba   block
	1120       16      65535     1120     59      516     yes    8

I moved the Quantum drive to the 486. Because of the differences in cyls, 
lz, sect, ..etc, I Reloaded Everything, as the 486 did not care for the 
386's settings. During the original installation (386), I set up the 
partitions in the following way:

	hda1	primary		dos		80meg
	hda2	primary		/		16
	hda3	primary		swap		16
	hda4	extended
	hda5	extended	/usr		180
	hda6	extended	/usr/local	120
	hda7	extended	/var		32
	hda8	extended	/home		70

Hda's 5-8 are extended/logical. Hda4 contained hda's 5-8 as reported
in the boot.

When I reinstalled everything this time, I kept the same basic setup,
except for some size changes. This time however, when I got to the
'new' 'primary/logical' options in fdisk, when I created the logical
device, it created hda5:

	hda1	primary		dos		80meg
	hda2	primary		/		10
	hda3	primary		swap		16
	hda4	extended
	hda5	extended			5
	hda6	extended	/usr		200
	hda7	extended	/usr/local	100
	hda8	extended	/var		40
	hda9	extended	/home		64.5

Also, when I print the partition record, fdisk gives the following message
for hda4:

	Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
	Phys=(1023, 15, 59) logical=(1119, 15, 59)

In fdisk this time, when I set up the logical partition, I had to give it a
size of 5meg, this was the default size hda4 was assigned when I did
this on the 386. 
This time it defaulted to the remainder of free space, 400meg or so, thus 
giving me no more options for further logical partitions.
Since 5meg was the default size last time, I assigned 5meg to the logical
hda, which I assumed would be hda5.

Hda4 is in fact a container for hda's 5-9, all the numbers add up. It's
just that the last time I did this (386) hda4 contained hda's 5-8.
I never intended to create hda5 as a nothing partition, I'm not sure
as to why it's here now or what it's for. I gave it a filesystem, but
nothing else. Upon booting the reinstalled system, hda5 is not mounted. 
All is the same except that now I have an hda9.

I reinstalled debian linux with the existing 1.2.1 boot, root & base
images, and soon will recompile with the 1.2.13-3 source.

I'm not sure if anyone has had any similar experiences with this, I
guess all I really want to know is, is this mystery partition harmful?

I sincerely hope that I've made myself clear here. This may after all
be nothing to worry about.

Thanks

Barry Masterson
jbarrm@panix.com