[Techtalk] Extended Partitions

[Rasjid Wilcox]

On Thursday 20 November 2003 10:48, Hamster wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 10:10:42 +1100
>
> Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw at openminddev.net> wrote:
> > Get cfdisk.  Use it instead of fdisk.
>
> The software you use to partition your drive has no effect what so ever on
> the partition types you can choose.

Actually, the point I meant to make here was that (from memory) cfdisk doesn't 
ask me to provide a 'type' when setting up the partition to hold the extended 
partitions in.  Neither (from memory) did any of the GUI partition tools that 
came with most of the distro's I've installed.

These tools just choose a (hopefully sensible) default value for me.

I can and have used fdisk, but given a choice I choose something a bit more 
user friendly that makes some of the decisions for me.  But then, that is me.

Moreover, from the fdisk man page (not the cfdisk man page):
BUGS
There are several *fdisk programs around.  Each has its problems and 
strengths.  Try them in the order  cfdisk,  fdisk, sfdisk.   (Indeed,  cfdisk  
is a beautiful program that has strict requirements on the partition tables 
it accepts, and produces high quality partition tables. Use it if you can.  
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. ... )

The author of the fdisk man page recommends one uses cfdisk instead.  That was 
enough for me...

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +10 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net