Re: 1.4.4 doesnt recognize all pdisk partitions

[Ethan Benson]

On Sat, Nov 04, 2000 at 03:25:31PM -0200, Andrew Clausen wrote:
> 
> I see.  Well, this is a bug in Mac partition stuff, that we need
> a work-around for.  Not a "bug in parted" ;-)

indeed, it is also not necessary to use `Apple_Free' as a temporary
partition type in Drive Setup, NetBSD/m68k for example asks you to
just create HFS partitions, then you use a utility to choose which hfs
partitions to `convert' (change the type to Apple_UNIX_SVR2 or
whatever) this is a more correct way to accomplish this.  

further to that you should always use the OSes native partitioner to
create its partitions anyway, and for the most part today that is not
a problem.  (most people are using either *BSD which does not even
support mac disklabels at all and insists on using msdos (except
netbsd 68k iirc) or GNU/Linux which has at least two working
partitioners now)

> > Please don't ignore these partitions when the name is not "Extra".
> 
> Ethan/anyone: is this reasonable?  Are there any other names we should
> check for?

Apple_Free is Apple_Free is Apple_Free, the name is irrelevant and
arbitrary.  its been a long time but i think that Apple_HD_SC_Setup
(the original macos partitioner) used a different name on Apple_Free
partitions.  its irrelevant, the type is what is important not the
name.  i am aware of no software which assumes it can do anything with
an Apple_Free partition other then reallocate its space to real
partitions based on the name alone.

> What is "Drive Setup"?  Are you sure these are "free space"?

Drive Setup is a buggy crippled mac partitioning utility, the ONLY
macos partitioning utility anymore. 

the free space partition it creates is indeed free space, apple has
always done this, in the old days the reason was to leave room for
driver updates or patches that required more space.  i remember some
cases where you had to reformat the entire disk to install a driver
patch if you eliminated this free space (by expanding the main
partition to consume it)  i don't think this is a problem anymore
since apple has allocated several partitions for different drivers
along with a dedicated `patches' partition which can accept arbitrary
patches/upgrades.  the free space created is probably just an artifact
of very old apple policy.  

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

pgpYfG85QQwQL.pgp
Description: PGP signature