From: Niall O Broin (niall at domain magicgoeshere.com)
Date: Mon 03 Jul 2000 - 15:19:49 IST
On Mon, Jul 03, 2000 at 01:12:45AM +0100, Emmanuel Stone wrote:
> Disk /dev/hda1: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1247 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1p1 ? 105945 207378 814758329+ 74 Unknown
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
> phys=(366, 104, 37) should be (366, 254, 63)
> /dev/hda1p2 ? 82801 116350 269488144 65 Novell Netware 386
> Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
> phys=(10, 121, 13) should be (10, 254, 63)
> /dev/hda1p3 ? 33551 120595 699181456 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3
> Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
> phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 254, 63)
> /dev/hda1p4 ? 243332 243336 32669+ bb Unknown
> Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:
> phys=(96, 0, 7) should be (96, 254, 63)
>
Oooooooops - this is a fscking mess. Conventionally, the primary partitions
(1-4, or as many as you have defined) would occupy consecutive cylinders on
the disk, with partition 1 starting at cylinder 1. I don't suppose there's
anything wrong with 1 being physically after 2, but there's nothing to be
gained by it. And one thing you must NEVER have is overlapping partitions.
Again, although having overlapped partitions defined is not per se a bad
thing, there's no reason to do so, and it leads to disaster when you make a
filesystem on more than one of them. From the list above, it can be seen
that partition 2 overlaps partition 1, and partition 3 completely contains
partition 2 while partition 4 is tiny (possibly a /boot at some stage) and
is sitting out in space somewhere.
Another oddity is that the partition types are all over the place - none of
your partitions are marked as any kind of DOS / 'doze, Linux or Linux swap.
Frankly, it amazes me that anything ever worked on this machine, given the
above output from fdisk. Strangely, the output above is quite different from
that given by gpart. Although gpart guesses, its output is much more
rational and ties in with what you say you have. Perhaps you have somehow
totally mangled your partition table, though I don't know how Linux would
then boot. My honest opinion is that the only resolution to your problem
will be a complete backup of anything you want, followed by repartitioning,
making of filesystems anew and restoration of data. A quite clueful person
might be able to sort things out in a hands on session, but even then, some
kind of reasonably large backup medium (another disk ?) would be a big help.
There's a chance that I'm barking up an entirely wrong tree, but if I saw
the above output from fdisk from a horse, I'd shoot it straight away :-)
Kindest regards,
Niall
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