647 lines
26 KiB
Plaintext
647 lines
26 KiB
Plaintext
Partitions-Mass-Storage-Definitions-Naming-HOWTO
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Jean-Daniel Dodin
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<jdd@dodin.org>
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Revision History
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Revision V0.1 2009-05-09 Revised by: jdd
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Table of Contents
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1.
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2. Copyright and Licence
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3. Mass Storage Involved Here
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4. Definitions
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4.1. Warning
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4.2. Bytes
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4.3. Sectors
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4.4. Heads
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4.5. Tracks
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4.6. Cylinders
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4.7. Disks
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4.8. Partitions
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4.9. Partition Table
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4.10. File Systems
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4.11. Files and Nodes
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5. Drive Naming in Linux
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5.1. Naming Convention
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6. Partition Naming in Linux
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6.1. Numbers
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6.2. Meaning of the Numbers
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7. Device Major and Minor Numbers
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8. Partition Types
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8.1. Linux Partition Types
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8.2. Foreign Partition Types
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8.3. Swap Partitions
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8.4. Complete List
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9. How Many Partitions
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1.
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Partitions-Mass-Storage-Definitions-Naming-HOWTO, copyright (c) 2009
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Jean-Daniel Dodin
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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2. Copyright and Licence
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The copyright of this document is to the author, Jean-Daniel Dodin,
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according to the following licence.
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Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
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document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
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Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software
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Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and
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no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the
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section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
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[http://wiki.tldp.org/LdpWikiDefaultLicence#GNUFreeDocumentationLicense]
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GNU Free Documentation License
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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3. Mass Storage Involved Here
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Mass storage involved in the present HOWTO are rewritable random access
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ones. Most of them are magnetic rotating disks (floppies, Hard Drive) or
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flash memory (USB key or any kind of memory card).
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For example, cdroms and dvds are notconcerned by this HOWTO ( see
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Wikipedia). Tapes are not either.
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Mass storage are used by the kernel, so the basic doc can be found on
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[http://kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/device-list/devices-2.6+.txt] the
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kernel Web site
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Reference site should be the International Disk drive Equipment and
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Materials Association. Shouldbecause this Web site is not very friendly.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4. Definitions
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4.1. Warning
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Many definitions about drives are only virtual. That is they are used,
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but the hardware is often quite different from the expected description.
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Usually this have no odd result, any mass storage have to be seen as a
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black box.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.2. Bytes
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Computers counts with binaries, 1 & 0, 1111100001110... To be able to
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read this better, humans uses nibbles (4 bits) often shown as
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Hexadecimal numbers from 0 to f (0123456789abcdef). Nibbles are usually
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grouped by two and this gives a byte. The most used memory unit is byte
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and it's multiples, KiB (Kilo Bytes), MiB (Mega Bytes), GiB (Gigabytes).
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The "i" denotes the binary use (0ne Ki is 1024, not 1000), the uppercase
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"B" denotes Bytes, not bits.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.3. Sectors
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Sometime, the word blockis used in place of sectors.
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Mass storage devices (at least the ones we are dealing with here) store
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bytes in "Sectors" of 512 Bytes. This is uneven, because any sector
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count have to be divided by two to have the KiB number, so most
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partitonning software accepts letters k (KiB), m (MiB), g... as options.
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Wise ones do not make any case difference.
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Sector size is the available byte count. The true sector is bigger, as
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it have to include housekeeping data. You don't have to worry about
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that.
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Notice that as of 03-22-2006, the IDEMA annouced a new sector size of
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4kiB (4096 Bytes):
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[http://www.idema.org/_smartsite/modules/local/data_file/show_file.php?cmd=download&data_file_id=1446]
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http://www.idema.org/_smartsite/modules/local/data_file/show_file.php?cmd=download&data_file_id=1446-
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doc file, can be openned with OpenOffice.org.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.4. Heads
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Rotating mass storage devices uses heads. True heads are the physical
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electromechanical device that writes and read the magnetic track. Drives
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being made of rotating plates, the plates have two sides, so disks can
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have two head by plate. Having two plates (frequent) you have four
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heads.
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Heads are writing through very complex system, see detailed info here:
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[http://www.spmtips.com/library/data_storage]
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http://www.spmtips.com/library/data_storage.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.5. Tracks
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Plates are rotating. When a head is still, the plate rotation and the
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width of the head are defining a track.
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Heads are moving from the external part of the plate to the inner part,
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step by steps. Each step defines a new track.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.6. Cylinders
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Heads are moving together, all at the same time. They may rotate - on
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they own center, not the plate center, of course. They also may have a
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linear move. You can see an example of linear moving head in any
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cdreader, looking at the move of the laser head. Most disks are as shown
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by this wikipedia image
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[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Hard_disk_platters_and_head.jpg/200px-Hard_disk_platters_and_head.jpg]
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Hard_disk_platters_and_head.jpg/200px-Hard_disk_platters_and_head.jpg.
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When you think of all the tracks defined by each head at the same time,
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you have a cylinder. So on a rotating drive, all the tracks of the same
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cylinder are read or written at the same time. The actual data is spread
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on all the plates. The way the data is actually written is up to the
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drive manufacturer, not the user.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.7. Disks
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Small disks are used directly as a hole bunch of sectors. Basic programs
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can access data directly on sectors. Many do (like dd or any
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partitionning programm).
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But we live in a world of extremely high capacity mass storage.
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Terabytes is normal nowaday (2009), when a complete Linux system can
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live on a floppy (1440 bytes). So there is a need of making several
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parts from a mass storage device, though the partitions.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.8. Partitions
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Partitioning is a means to divide a single drive into many logical
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drives. A partition is a contiguous set of sectors. To lessen the heads
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travel, partitions can be "aligned" on the cylinder size, that is use an
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integer number of cylinder. This is not always done, but should as it
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have many other advantages for recovery.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.9. Partition Table
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As you can have many partitions, you need to have a partition table.
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This partition table is stored in the very beginning of the drive. It's
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very unlikely that you will have to change this table directly writing
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bytes with an hexadecimal editor, so we wont say more on the position of
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the table.
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There are many Operating Systems all around that all share similar
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hardware and as many partition systems. We will look only at what one
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can find in a PC, even if it's not easy to define that nowaday. Say, for
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us, a PC is any computer able to run Linux (I know, it's not always
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true).
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Each of these partition kinds are noted in the table by a special flag
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called "type" ("t" in fdisk). Most known are type 83 for Linux
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partitions and 82 for Linux swap (hex numbers).
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Notice that most Operating Systems can share partition tables. At least,
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if a disk is hardware compatible with several systems, these systems
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should be able to see what the others have done, not to erase a drive by
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accident. I can't say for sure that its true in the real life.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.10. File Systems
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Partitions can be accessed directly as sectors, as any part of the disk,
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but are usually filled with a file system. File system and partitions
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are related only because a file system is in a partition, but that's
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all. You can have a disk without partition but with a file system or
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have partitions without file system (the swap partition beeing the most
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well known). For details on file systems, see Wikipedia.
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In summary, file systems allow storing data in files with human readable
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names and to sort the files in a friendly way, for example as
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directories, subdirectories, text, images...
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4.11. Files and Nodes
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Nearly all what you can find on a mass storage partition, beside
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sectors, from an user point of view, is a file. But computers are
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curious geeks and you can treat files like disks if you want. Using the
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"loop" system, default in most Linux kernels, one can partition the
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inside of the file, create file systems on it and mount it. This is
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specially handy for experiments.
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Some of these files are devicesor nodes. Partitions are not files and
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are accessed via special nodes we will see later. These nodes are not
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created by touch but by mknode. Use with caution. Nodes need a type (
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cfor "character" or "b" for block) and major and minor numbers. For what
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we need, major numbers are disk numbers and minor numbers are partition
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numbers. The list is visible in /proc/partitions
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cat /proc/partitions
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major minor #blocks name
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8 0 488386584 sda
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8 1 52436128 sda1
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8 2 1 sda2
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8 5 2104483 sda5
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8 6 20972826 sda6
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8 7 52436128 sda7
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8 8 360434308 sda8
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#mknod b 8 9 /dev/sda9
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Creates a /dev/sda9 node of no nuse, given this don't create partition,
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only the node. In a usual Linux distribution, nodes are dynamically
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created at boot time, so nobody should have to do so. However, sometime
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the automatic system fails.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5. Drive Naming in Linux
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There is a special nomenclature that linux uses to refer to mass storage
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that must be understood.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1. Naming Convention
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Linux used to deal with two kind of drives, depending of the electronic
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interface (controller), IDE and SCSI. Oldtimers remember the day where
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cdwriters where acccessed through "SCSI emulation". In fact IDE and SCSI
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use mostly the same low level commands and for 2007 up, with the new
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"SATA" interface, the naming was unified and, in new ditributions, all
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the drives have the same naming. For this part, CD or DVD
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readers/writers are seen like Hard Drives.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1.1. Old IDE Names
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By convention, IDE drives where given device names /dev/hdato /dev/hdd.
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Hard Drive A( /dev/hda) is the first drive and Hard Drive C( /dev/hdc)
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is the third.
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A typical PC has two IDE controllers, each of which can have two drives
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connected to it. For example, /dev/hdais the first drive (master) on the
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first IDE controller and /dev/hddis the second (slave) drive on the
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second controller (the fourth IDE drive in the computer).
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So, typically, a computer with IDE controller can accomodate 4 drives:
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/dev/hda (primary master), /dev/hdb (primary slave), /dev/hdc (secondary
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master), /dev/hdd (secondary slave). Some (rare) Mother Boards have more
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than two controllers, some addition cards can also have controllers,
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these are numbered following the alphabet, but one have to figure out
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what real names are given for his particular hardware.
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You can have drives where ever you want, it's not mandatory to fill the
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gaps. You may have interest to read about what drive/cdrom connect to
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what place, but it's out of this document scope.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1.2. New Hard Drives Names
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Now all the rotating hard drives uses the same names as the old SCSI
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controllers, that is "s" in place of "h", so /dev/sda, and so on. The
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number of drives depends on the number of controllers on the Mother
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Board or the extended boards. Usually 4 are available. What will be the
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number of a drive is up to the controller card and the way it's read by
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the kernel, so difficult to say at first.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1.3. Flash Drives Names
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Flash drives are usually not connected through IDE or SATA interfaces
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and so don't uses the same names. Several interfaces are used with each
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different names. The kernel documentations gives the names.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1.4. Low level Devices and Extra naming
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You will find in some apps references to lowlevel SCSI devices and
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various naming conventions, for example (wodim is the command line cd
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burner):
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wodim --scanbus
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scsibus1:
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1,0,0 100) *
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1,1,0 101) 'TSSTcorp' 'CD/DVDW TS-L632D' 'ac00' Removable CD-ROM
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1,2,0 102) *
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1,3,0 103) *
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1,4,0 104) *
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1,5,0 105) *
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1,6,0 106) *
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1,7,0 107) *
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And you may have to use some sort of SCSI:1,1,0option to access the
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CDROM. try to avoid using this as much as possible, as it's very error
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prone and should be let to programmers only. I only mention it because
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you can't always avoid it.
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If you do "cat /dev/ | more", you can see:
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lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 mars 9 07:56 scd0 -> sr0
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(...)
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crw-r----- 1 root disk 21, 0 mars 9 07:56 sg0
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crw-rw----+ 1 root disk 21, 1 mars 9 07:56 sg1
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These scd, sr, sg devices are lowlevel interface (notice the "c" for
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"character"). Try not using them. dmesgand more /var/log/boot.msgshould
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give you the usable sdxx device, like (short summary):
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<5>sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors: (500GB/465GiB)
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<5>sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
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<7>sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
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This mean the drive is /dev/sda.
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However these files (given by dmesgand more /var/log/boot.msg) used to
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be easy to read but are no more. Now the kernel starts in parallel
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several drivers, so the messages are mixed, you can have
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<6> sda:<6>USB Universal Host Contr'ller Interface driver v3.0
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This don't mean that your sda drive is an usb one, but the usb module
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was started at the same time as the drive one and send it's messages
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simultaneously. You still have a /dev/sdadrive.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1.5. New Media Names
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Here the dmesg content for inserting an USB key:
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scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
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usb 5-3: New USB device found, idVendor=0951, idProduct=160e
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usb 5-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
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usb 5-3: Product: DataTraveler 2.0
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usb 5-3: Manufacturer: Kingston
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usb 5-3: SerialNumber: 200706200000000059188185
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usb-storage: device found at 9
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usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
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scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 3930112 512-byte hardware sectors: (2.01GB/1.87GiB)
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 3930112 512-byte hardware sectors: (2.01GB/1.87GiB)
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
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sdb: sdb1
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sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
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sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
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usb-storage: device scan complete
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You see there all what we where speaking about right now! SCSI
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emulation, scsi, sd and sg names, but also the sdb that is most
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important for us.
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Here are the messages for a high speed SDHC card:
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tifm_core: MMC/SD card detected in socket 0:1
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mmc1: new SDHC card at address d555
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mmcblk0: mmc1:d555 SD04G 3.79GiB
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mmcblk0: p1
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/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /media/H2SD type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,flush,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=lower)
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When the two cards are probably the same flash memory chip, the USB key
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uses the USB interface and SCSI emulation, the SDHC card uses the PCMCIA
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slot of the laptop, with a special device naming (/dev/mmcblk0). The
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use, as far as partitionning is involved is the same.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5.1.6. Disk ID
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In a world where disks are many and removable, it's impossible to track
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what device is used by what disk. So there are now many way of using a
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disk name. This makes it extremely difficult to work with basic tools.
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These are "Disk labels" and "Disk UUID", also "Partition Labels". See
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fstab man page for details.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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6. Partition Naming in Linux
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6.1. Numbers
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Partition naming is thanksfully simpler than drive one. Partitions are
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simply given a number from 0 up (decimal). Sometime a "p" is appended on
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front of the number:
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cat /proc/partitions
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major minor #blocks name
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8 0 488386584 sda
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8 1 52436128 sda1
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8 2 1 sda2
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8 5 2104483 sda5
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8 6 20972826 sda6
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8 7 52436128 sda7
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8 8 360434308 sda8
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179 0 3979776 mmcblk0
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179 1 3975680 mmcblk0p1
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As you see, partition devices are listed in /proc/partition. This
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file... is not a real file but is created on the fly. Don't worry, for
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what we need it's a file.
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Notice the "p1" partition name for the SDHC card.
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Max number of partitions is 15 for SCSI and all the drives using the new
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SATA driver, 63 for IDE drives (0 is the full drive, 0 to 15 is four
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bits 0 to 64, 6 bits)
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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6.2. Meaning of the Numbers
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Not all the numbers have the same meaning. This mess come from the PC
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history. One can divide floppies with partitions, but then 4 ones seems
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sufficient. But then come Hard drives :-). So the partitons numbers 1,
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2, 3 and 4 are primarypartitions. One drive can only have 4 primaries.
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To go further, we have to use one of these primary as a big one and
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sub-partition this one, so to have logicalpartitions. The big
|
|
extendedpartition can be any of the 4.
|
|
|
|
So, remember, the primary partitions are inside the drive and the
|
|
logical partitions are inside one of the primary, called the
|
|
extendedpartition.
|
|
|
|
Once the logical partitions are created, it's no more recommended to
|
|
write directly to the extended one. Writing to an extended partition
|
|
would erase the logical ones like writing directly to a hard drive erase
|
|
the partitons. Beware, it's possible!!
|
|
|
|
If, after creating 4 primary partitions, all the disk space is not used,
|
|
the remaining space is lost (unusable), so most of the time, create the
|
|
desired primaries, then at last the extended one with all the remaining
|
|
room.
|
|
|
|
It's not necessary to create 4 primaries. You could use only one
|
|
extended (Linux only), but there are some advantages of using primaries.
|
|
|
|
Primaries being 4, the first logical partition is always 5. So any
|
|
partition with number of five and up is a logical one.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
7. Device Major and Minor Numbers
|
|
|
|
The only important thing with a device file are its major and minor
|
|
device numbers, which are shown instead of the file size:
|
|
|
|
$ ls -l /dev/hda
|
|
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 mars 9 07:56 /dev/sda
|
|
|
|
Shows permissions ( brw-rw----), owner (root), group (disk), major
|
|
device number (8), minor device number (0), date (mars 9 - french, no
|
|
year), hour (07:56) and device name (guess :-).
|
|
|
|
When accessing a device file, the major number selects which device
|
|
driver is being called to perform the input/output operation. This call
|
|
is being done with the minor number as a parameter and it is entirely up
|
|
to the driver how the minor number is being interpreted. The driver
|
|
documentation usually describes how the driver uses minor numbers.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
8. Partition Types
|
|
|
|
8.1. Linux Partition Types
|
|
|
|
A partition is labeled to host a certain kind of file system (not to be
|
|
confused with a volume label. Such a file system could be the linux
|
|
standard ext3 file system or linux swap space, or even foreign file
|
|
systems like (Microsoft) NTFS or (Sun) UFS. There is a numerical code
|
|
associated with each partition type. For example, the code for ext2 is
|
|
0x83and linux swap is 0x82(0x mean hexadecimal).
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
8.2. Foreign Partition Types
|
|
|
|
The partition type codes have been arbitrarily chosen (you can't figure
|
|
out what they should be) and they are particular to a given operating
|
|
system. Therefore, it is theoretically possible that if you use two
|
|
operating systems with the same hard drive, the same code might be used
|
|
to designate two different partition types. OS/2 marks its partitions
|
|
with a 0x07 type and so does Windows NT's NTFS. MS-DOS allocates several
|
|
type codes for its various flavors of FAT file systems: 0x01, 0x04 and
|
|
0x06 are known. DR-DOS used 0x81 to indicate protected FAT partitions,
|
|
creating a type clash with Linux/Minix at that time, but neither
|
|
Linux/Minix nor DR-DOS are widely used any more.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
8.3. Swap Partitions
|
|
|
|
Every process running on your computer is allocated a number of blocks
|
|
of RAM. These blocks are called pages. The set of in-memory pages which
|
|
will be referenced by the processor in the very near future is called a
|
|
"working set." Linux tries to predict these memory accesses (assuming
|
|
that recently used pages will be used again in the near future) and
|
|
keeps these pages in RAM if possible.
|
|
|
|
If you have too many processes running on a machine, the kernel will try
|
|
to free up RAM by writing pages to disk. This is what swap space is for.
|
|
It effectively increases the amount of memory you have available.
|
|
However, disk I/O is about a hundred times slower than reading from and
|
|
writing to RAM. Consider this emergency memory and not extra memory.
|
|
|
|
If memory becomes so scarce that the kernel pages out from the working
|
|
set of one process in order to page in for another, the machine is said
|
|
to be thrashing. Some readers might have inadvertenly experienced this:
|
|
the hard drive is grinding away like crazy, but the computer is slow to
|
|
the point of being unusable. Swap space is something you need to have,
|
|
but it is no substitute for sufficient RAM.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
8.4. Complete List
|
|
|
|
From the fdisk help:
|
|
|
|
0 Vide 1e Hidden W95 FAT1 80 Old Minix bf Solaris
|
|
1 FAT12 24 NEC DOS 81 Minix / old Lin c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
|
|
2 XENIX root 39 Plan 9 82 Linux swap / So c4 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
|
|
3 XENIX usr 3c PartitionMagic 83 Linux c6 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
|
|
4 FAT16 <32M 40 Venix 80286 84 OS/2 hidden C: c7 Syrinx
|
|
5 Extended 41 PPC PReP Boot 85 Linux extended da Non-FS data
|
|
6 FAT16 42 SFS 86 NTFS volume set db CP/M / CTOS / .
|
|
7 HPFS/NTFS 4d QNX4.x 87 NTFS volume set de Dell Utility
|
|
8 AIX 4e QNX4.x 2nd part 88 Linux plein tex df BootIt
|
|
9 AIX bootable 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 8e Linux LVM e1 DOS access
|
|
a OS/2 Boot Manag 50 OnTrack DM 93 Amoeba e3 DOS R/O
|
|
b W95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 94 Amoeba BBT e4 SpeedStor
|
|
c W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52 CP/M 9f BSD/OS eb BeOS fs
|
|
e W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a0 IBM Thinkpad hi ee GPT
|
|
f W95 Etendu (LBA 54 OnTrackDM6 a5 FreeBSD ef EFI (FAT-12/16/
|
|
10 OPUS 55 EZ-Drive a6 OpenBSD f0 Linux/PA-RISC b
|
|
11 Hidden FAT12 56 Golden Bow a7 NeXTSTEP f1 SpeedStor
|
|
12 Compaq diagnost 5c Priam Edisk a8 UFS Darwin f4 SpeedStor
|
|
14 Hidden FAT16 <3 61 SpeedStor a9 NetBSD f2 DOS secondary
|
|
16 Hidden FAT16 63 GNU HURD or Sys ab Amorce Darwin fb VMware VMFS
|
|
17 Hidden HPFS/NTF 64 Novell Netware b7 BSDI fs fc VMware VMKCORE
|
|
18 AST SmartSleep 65 Novell Netware b8 BSDI swap fd Linux raid auto
|
|
1b Hidden W95 FAT3 70 DiskSecure Mult bb Boot Wizard hid fe LANstep
|
|
1c Hidden W95 FAT3 75 PC/IX be Amorce Solaris ff BBT
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
9. How Many Partitions
|
|
|
|
The exact number of partitions allowed on a drive is fixed by the
|
|
kernel. So you can find the exact number is the kernel documentation,
|
|
the last version is maintained here
|
|
[http://kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/device-list/]
|
|
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/device-list/If you have the kernel
|
|
source installed, you can find your version on your computer at
|
|
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt.
|
|
|
|
Look at "limit on partition". Find yours. Common SATA number is 31, SCSI
|
|
is 15, some are less.
|