is fdisk supposed to be better than GParted?
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From: Robert Heller on 18 Feb 2010 17:14 At Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:34:04 -0800 Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote: > > On 2010-02-18, pk <pk(a)pk.invalid> wrote: > > yawnmoth wrote: > > > >> According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an > >> unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... > >> why the difference? > > > > You might find this note enlightening, taken from the fdisk man page: > > > > "fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to > > produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support > > for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you > > can." > > I was going to quote that from my man page, but then noted that it does > not appear in man fdisk on my CentOS systems, only on my Slackware > system. It's possible the OP has the CentOS version of the fdisk man > page. (It's certainly possible the OP did not read the man page.) The version of fdisk on my CentOS 5.4 is: sauron.deepsoft.com% rpm -qf `which fdisk` util-linux-2.13-0.52.el5_4.1 sauron.deepsoft.com% fdisk -v fdisk (util-linux 2.13-pre7) I wonder which version of fdisk is on your Slackware systems? An older or newer version? > > --keith > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller(a)deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
From: Jean-David Beyer on 18 Feb 2010 17:15 Keith Keller wrote: > On 2010-02-18, pk <pk(a)pk.invalid> wrote: >> yawnmoth wrote: >> >>> According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an >>> unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... >>> why the difference? >> You might find this note enlightening, taken from the fdisk man page: >> >> "fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to >> produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support >> for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you >> can." > > I was going to quote that from my man page, but then noted that it does > not appear in man fdisk on my CentOS systems, only on my Slackware > system. It's possible the OP has the CentOS version of the fdisk man > page. (It's certainly possible the OP did not read the man page.) > > --keith > I have never had trouble with fdisk on my systems, but my biggest hard drives are only 73 Gigabytes. On my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system, the manual page for fdisk has this for its BUGS section. BUGS There are several *fdisk programs around. Each has its problems and strengths. Try them in the order parted, fdisk, sfdisk. The IRIX/SGI type disklabel is currently not supported by the kernel. Moreover, IRIX/SGI header directories are not fully supported yet. The option 'dump partition table to file' is missing. -- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. /V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org ^^-^^ 17:10:01 up 29 days, 18:30, 4 users, load average: 4.46, 4.53, 4.58
From: Keith Keller on 18 Feb 2010 17:29 On 2010-02-18, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8(a)verizon.net> wrote: > Keith Keller wrote: >> On 2010-02-18, pk <pk(a)pk.invalid> wrote: >>> yawnmoth wrote: >>> >>>> According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an >>>> unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... >>>> why the difference? >>> You might find this note enlightening, taken from the fdisk man page: >>> >>> "fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to >>> produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support >>> for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you >>> can." >> >> I was going to quote that from my man page, but then noted that it does >> not appear in man fdisk on my CentOS systems, only on my Slackware >> system. It's possible the OP has the CentOS version of the fdisk man >> page. (It's certainly possible the OP did not read the man page.) > > I have never had trouble with fdisk on my systems, but my biggest hard > drives are only 73 Gigabytes. > > On my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system, the manual page for fdisk has > this for its BUGS section. > > BUGS > There are several *fdisk programs around. Each has its problems and > strengths. Try them in the order parted, fdisk, sfdisk. It does have that, but it doesn't have the "fuzzy things" part described above. To answer Robert's question in another post, I have Slackware 13, but IIRC the fuzzy things part has been in the man page for Slackware 13 for many releases. On my Slackware 13 box: $ /sbin/fdisk -v fdisk (util-linux-ng 2.14.2) On my CentOS 5.4 box: $ /sbin/fdisk -v fdisk (util-linux 2.13-pre7) So it looks like slightly different versions. Perhaps RH decided mentioning "fuzzy" in a man page wasn't professional enough? ;-/ --keith -- kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us (try just my userid to email me) AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt see X- headers for PGP signature information
From: Robert Heller on 18 Feb 2010 19:30 At Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:29:16 -0800 Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote: > > On 2010-02-18, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8(a)verizon.net> wrote: > > Keith Keller wrote: > >> On 2010-02-18, pk <pk(a)pk.invalid> wrote: > >>> yawnmoth wrote: > >>> > >>>> According to GParted, however, it only has one partition - an > >>>> unallocated one with an unallocated filesystem. My question is... > >>>> why the difference? > >>> You might find this note enlightening, taken from the fdisk man page: > >>> > >>> "fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to > >>> produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support > >>> for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you > >>> can." > >> > >> I was going to quote that from my man page, but then noted that it does > >> not appear in man fdisk on my CentOS systems, only on my Slackware > >> system. It's possible the OP has the CentOS version of the fdisk man > >> page. (It's certainly possible the OP did not read the man page.) > > > > I have never had trouble with fdisk on my systems, but my biggest hard > > drives are only 73 Gigabytes. > > > > On my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 system, the manual page for fdisk has > > this for its BUGS section. > > > > BUGS > > There are several *fdisk programs around. Each has its problems and > > strengths. Try them in the order parted, fdisk, sfdisk. > > It does have that, but it doesn't have the "fuzzy things" part described > above. > > To answer Robert's question in another post, I have Slackware 13, but > IIRC the fuzzy things part has been in the man page for Slackware 13 for > many releases. > > On my Slackware 13 box: > > $ /sbin/fdisk -v > fdisk (util-linux-ng 2.14.2) ^^ I wonder what that -ng is all about? Maybe Slackware is using a forked version of util-linux? > > On my CentOS 5.4 box: > > $ /sbin/fdisk -v > fdisk (util-linux 2.13-pre7) > > So it looks like slightly different versions. Perhaps RH decided > mentioning "fuzzy" in a man page wasn't professional enough? ;-/ > > --keith > > > > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller(a)deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
From: Bill Waddington on 18 Feb 2010 20:01
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:40:38 GMT, Stefan Patric <not(a)this.address.com> wrote: >On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:23:19 -0800, yawnmoth wrote: > >> According to "sudo fdisk -1", /dev/sdc is described thusly: >> >> Disk /dev/sdc: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, >> 14593 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk >> identifier: 0xf0000000 >> >> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System >> /dev/sdc1 * 14267 14594 2620416 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) >> /dev/sdc2 11 1316 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS >> /dev/sdc3 * 1316 14267 104031232 7 HPFS/NTFS >> /dev/sdc4 14267 14594 2621440 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) >> /dev/sdc5 14267 14594 2620416 0 Empty >> >> Partition table entries are not in disk order [snip] > 3. sdc1 & sdc3 are both set as boot partitions. On any physical hard >drive, regardless of how many partitions it has, there should only be one >partition designated with the "boot" flag. Minor nit: IIRC some boot managers - System Commander for instance - use the active flag to mark partitions as bootable. Bootable in that case means bootable by SC, and allowed to appear in its boot menu. It will flag multiple partitions as bootable if directed to by the user and it finds what it considers to be a valid boot signature in the partition. I'll be happy if I never have to fight System Commander again. Wrangling grub is a real pleasure after that mess. Now back to your original discussion, Bill -- William D Waddington william.waddington(a)beezmo.com "Even bugs...are unexpected signposts on the long road of creativity..." - Ken Burtch |