From kragen@dnaco.net Sat Jul  4 21:09:46 1998
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 21:09:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kragen <kragen@dnaco.net>
To: systalk@ml.org
cc: jerodd@usa.net
Subject: Re: [ST] Installing Linux
In-Reply-To: <359D8C32.255C@usa.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.96.980704210307.13172X-100000@picard.dnaco.net>
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On Sat, 4 Jul 1998, Joshua E. Rodd wrote:
> He asked if Linux could be installed on an extended partition (the
> answer to which is no unless you want it on a FAT partition). You don't
> normally want Linux on a FAT partition (using UMSDOS, I believe) unless 
> you like poor disk performance.
> 
> Not being able to use an ext2 partition on an extended partition
> (extended partitions have NOTHING to do with the ext2 filesystem, by the 
> way) is quite annoying. OS/2 and NT can use an extended partition just fine.

You may have to define your terms -- I thought an 'extended partition'
was something you created instead of a 'primary partition' to contain
'logical partitions'.  If that's what you're talking about, well, you
can certainly have ext2fses on logical partitions inside extended
partitions.  Here's gentle's /etc/fstab:

# mountoptions can specify among otherthings:
# ro, rw: read-only, read/write
# noauto: don't mount at boot time
# user: let anyone mount and unmount
# Format:
# device              mountpoint  type      mountoptions     dumpfreq fsckorder
/dev/hda5             swap        swap      defaults         0        2
/dev/hda1             /           ext2      defaults         1        1
# mount it noauto so if I do rm -rf / things will be OK
/dev/hda2             /backroot   ext2      defaults,noauto  0        0
/dev/hda6             /var        ext2      defaults         1        2
/dev/hda7             /usr        ext2      defaults         1        2
/dev/hda3             /dos        umsdos    defaults,umask=0 1        2
procfilesystem        /proc       proc      defaults         1        2
/dev/fd0              /floppy     auto      noauto,user,sync 0        0
/dev/hdb              /cdrom      auto      noauto,user,exec 0        0

(All of these do mount correctly.)

Here's the output from fdisk on gentle:

Disk /dev/hda: 32 heads, 63 sectors, 824 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2016 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot   Begin    Start      End   Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *        1        1       50    50368+  83  Linux native
/dev/hda2           51       51       76    26208   83  Linux native
/dev/hda3           77       77      178   102816    6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/hda4          179      179      824   651168    5  Extended
/dev/hda5          179      179      241    63472+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda6          242      242      343   102784+  83  Linux native
/dev/hda7          344      344      824   484816+  83  Linux native

So my hda4 is an "extended partition", in fdisk's terminology, and it
has /var and /usr on it, both ext2fs.

(/backroot is a 25-meg partition that has a full Linux system on it, in
case I really skrog my main partitions.)

Kragen