[PATCH] fix /boot/loader for extended slices

[Jonas Sundström]

(reply to a post on submit@)

walt <wa1ter at xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 ...
> In other words, there will always be only one slice
> of type 05 among the four primary partitions because
> there is no way to create a second one. 

As far as I can tell, the OpenBSD fdisk allows this, and there may be 
other tools that do.

Since BeOS is my home base I started out creating four primary, 
extended partitions of type 05 using the BeOS DriveSetup tool. This 
tool however does not itself know how to create logical (sub-
)partitions. I tried Win98's fdisk and GNU/Linux 'parted' without luck, 
and finally OpenBSD's fdisk.

OpenBSD fdisk had no complaints about the 4 extended partitions, and 
let me edit 4 (logical) partitions within each of them. I didn't 
actually go through with creating all 16 of them, but as far as I could 
see OpenBSD fdisk is designed to allow exactly this. The 17 /dev/wd1X 
characters (4x4+c) do seem like a perfect fit, FWIW.

In OpenBSD fdisk you 'select' an extended partition to enter it, and 
when you're done editing you 'quit' from there to go back to the top 
MBR. I didn't try nesting any deeper, but it may be supported. To what 
extent the OpenBSD loader and kernel support nested 05s is another 
question.

/Jonas Sundström.                 www.kirilla.com