[clue-tech] Partition madness

[David L. Anselmi]

Angelo Bertolli wrote:
[...]
> /dev/hda1 Linux
> /dev/hda2 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/hda4 Extended (which type?)
> /dev/hda5 Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda6 Linux
> /dev/hda7 Linux swap
> /dev/hda8 Linux

You delete hda5 and all the higher partitions get bumped down:

/dev/hda1 Linux
/dev/hda2 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda4 Extended (which type?)
/dev/hda5 Linux
/dev/hda6 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 Linux

So your grub/lilo tells the kernel that root is on hda6 and the kernel 
dutifully tries to mount that on /.  That fails, it can't find 
/bin/init, and panics.  If you do something with the space at the 
beginning of the extended partition so it still counts as a logical 
partition the kernel can still find /.

The reason for this is that (as mentioned) the first 4 (primary) 
partitions have space reserved in the MBR.  An extended partition points 
to the beginning of a linked list of logical partitions.  So if you take 
one out of the chain the rest get renumbered.  That's why gparted 
complains (so your disk partition tables and kernel tables don't get out 
of sync--the kernel always knows what's what but you can confuse 
yourself and do the wrong thing--fdisk doesn't care what you do to 
yourself).

HTH,
Dave
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