Re: Invalid partition table - recursive partition (was: Re: bug detected)

[Szakacsits Szabolcs]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Matt Chapman wrote:
> Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> >On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Matt Chapman wrote:
> >
> >>Error: Invalid partition table - recursive partition on /dev/hda. 
> >>A bug has been detected in GNU parted.  Please email a bug report to 
> >>address@hidden containing the version (1.6.6) and the following 
> >>message: Assertion (disk!= NULL) at ../../libparted/disk.c:1037 in 
> >>function ped_disk_next_partition() failed. 
> >>    
> >Could you please try Parted version 1.6.15? If you still have the
> >problem please send the output of fdisk -lu, and if you don't then
> >let us know. Thanks,
> >
> Well, I had easy access to version 1.6.9, and got:
> Error: Invalid partition table - recursive partition on /dev/hda.
> Segmentation fault

Hmm, Parted behaved a bit more poorly.
 
> fdisk -lu results in:
> 
> [physical info about my disk, the only HD, 200GB, etc...]

These info might be interesting but I think it's not needed this
time.

> Device      Boot   Start  End         Blocks      Id  System
> /dev/hda1   *      0      268435454   134217727+  4   FAT16 <32M

Weird. Using DOS disk labeling, a partition should never start at
sector 0 because the MBR, partition table and other infos occupy 
that sector.

However you have a large disk and in this case there are BIOS and XP
limitations if not using the right service packs, BIOS updates, etc (e.g
137 GB limit, see the above). Due to this, perhaps some "magic" is also
involved to access it fully.

> so apparently the Windows XP install CD overwrote my partition table 
> without ever asking me. I canceled out before doing any install. grr... 
> that should be illegal.

Unfortunately Windows installs can indeed do that.

        Szaka