Re: GPT name overflow

[Andreas Dilger]

On Mar 09, 2002  13:49 -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Mar 09, 2002  19:00 +1100, Andrew Clausen wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 01:05:59PM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> > > I've been looking at this, and having flags just doesn't cut it for
> > > representing all of the possible partition types.
> > 
> > Agreed, they are a work-around for a deeper problem.
> > 
> > > For example, LVM, RAID, swap, compaq-diag, dell-diag, msapm-suspend 
> > > (0x84),
> > > pheonix-suspend (0xa0), and dell-suspend (0xa1), etc. are all partition
> > > types*.
> > 
> > Right, except the swap case (it's akin to the "root" flag in most
> > cases).
> > 
> > However, parted has no way of representing anything other
> > than file systems (via PedFileSystem).  It should.  *That* is what
> > should be fixed, IMHO.  However, I don't really have any ideas yet
> > on how to do this Right.
> 
> I can't remember - did I send you my "named partition types" patch?  It
> adds "useful" names to partition types, like "linux", "swap", "raid",
> etc.  In some cases, these are synonyms, in others not.  MSDOS obviously
> supports the most partition types currently, but I imagine GPT will get
> a lot once it is more widely used.

Just to clarify, the partition type names are intended to be used
instead of having a huge number of flags (most of which are orthogonal
anyways).  In the partitioning code I wrote using libparted, I also had
a "default" partition type, which chooses the partition type based on
the filesystem type (as it currently does).  You only need to specify
a partition type explicitly in the case of -diag or such, which also
use fat* filesystems, or if the filesystem and partition type you are
creating are not understood by parted (i.e. 75% of the non-standard
partition types in MSDOS).

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert