Subject: Re: RFC: Changing default partition type for linux/ppc

From: Hollis Blanchard <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2000 22:33:10 +0900

Tom Gall wrote:
>
> Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> >
> > So I suggest moving to Linux_ext2, Linux_swap, or maybe simply Linux and
> > Linux_swap (since ext2 is not the only filesystem Linux may put on
> > these). Using a different type for swap would help avoiding confusion.
>
> I agree. I think this is a good step. However there's the obvious interoperability
> problems with MacOS, OS X etc... Hopefully Apple's OSes wouldn't do anything evil
> to the partition they don't recognize.

Well, they don't at this point. For example in partitioning tool in
LinuxPPC 2000, LinuxPPC Inc decided it would be better to use the type
"Linux_PPC". This works (in that nothing gets overwritten, corrupted,
etc) but has the disadvantage that no other software knows anything
about that type.

If you were writing software it would be pretty poor form to find data
you didn't understand and decide to "fix" it. I know there are programs
like that out there (if you look at
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html it seems
there is a rich history of them), but Apple seems to be doing well in
that regard so far...

Of course, everything may change with OS X but I would hope they don't
get malicious all of a sudden.

-Hollis

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