🚀 go-pugleaf

Karsten Ballueder wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I partitioned a new 4 GIB drive for Linux yesterday and fdisk warned
> me about the partitions overlapping each other.

<snip>

not sure about this, hope it helps:

I just fitted a new mo-bo which initially detected my hdd as Large mode
rather than LBA which confused Partition Magic but not Linux fdisk....
A trip to the BIOS fixed it; HDD auto-detect IIRC - didn't lose any
ext2s either :)


t

Karsten Ballueder wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I partitioned a new 4 GIB drive for Linux yesterday and fdisk warned
> me about the partitions overlapping each other.
> In fact, the end of one partition lies behind the start of the next,
> but not behind the begin of the next.
> 
> Can anyone make sense of this? What's the difference between the
> "start" and the "begin" of a partition? I didn't succeed chossing the
> partitionn sizes such as to avoid that overlap.
> 
> I also tried cfdisk which happily created 4 1GB partitions on the
> drive without any warning, but then fdisk's verify complained about
> the overlap again.



  Sounds like a problem I once had.   It came down to one
of two solutions...


Either A)

The BIOS is set to use LBA.   This is usually fine, but can 
sometimes mislead linux into wrong disk specs.  Try turning
this off in the bios, and re-fdisk your drives.

or B)

For some reason linux is getting the wrong info from the 
bios, sometimes old BIOS's mis-identify drives.  In which
case you could either a) enter details manually in the bios,
or b) pass the drive settings directly to linux at the
lilo prompt.


And yes, Microsoft windows seems to work fine with LBA
or knackered old bios's...  so I don't know why Linux
doesn't.   I guess its because windows is aimed specifically
at the pc market - where they cater for everyone with a 
great loss of speed and low code efficiency ( and lurvely 
crashes ).... whereas linux relies a little more on 'user
ability' and it lightening fast... and *nver* crashes :)

anyway, hope that helps.


Steve
Bristol, UK

Karsten Ballueder wrote:
 
> Hi,
> 
> I partitioned a new 4 GIB drive for Linux yesterday and fdisk warned
> me about the partitions overlapping each other.
> In fact, the end of one partition lies behind the start of the next,
> but not behind the begin of the next.
> 
> Can anyone make sense of this? What's the difference between the
> "start" and the "begin" of a partition? I didn't succeed chossing the
> partitionn sizes such as to avoid that overlap.

Cf. my own partition table:

  Disk /dev/hda: 32 heads, 63 sectors, 4200 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 2016 * 512 bytes
  
     Device Boot   Begin    Start      End   Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/hda1            1        1     1024  1032160+  83  Linux native
  /dev/hda2         1024     1025     3105  2097648   83  Linux native
  /dev/hda3         3072     3106     3227   122976   83  Linux native
  /dev/hda4         3072     3228     4200   980784   83  Linux native


If it looks something like that, then your problem is likely that you
set your disk to "Large" mode in BIOS, rather than LBA.

This appears to be non-serious and ignorable. However, one warning:
never change the mapping of a drive with live partitions; either move
everything off it and re-format after changing to LBA, or just live
with it. As long as the Starts and Ends don't overlap, you should be
safe.


Cheers,
-Matt.

"The results of this intrusion into your life will be used 'responsibly'
in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. Of course, the innocent have
nothing to fear from the rapidly expanding data industry."
 - Radiohead, Airbag/How Am I Driving?