On Sat, 3 May 1997 09:27:50 -0400 (EDT), Rick Jones wrote: > >At first I couldn't see much advantage to this since it's a minor task to >change a7 to b7 in lilo.conf after booting from floppy with b7mounted as >root to run lilo and install the boot manager. > >It would be a nice touch for lilo to do this though. It would mean you >could boot several systems in an office with a single floppy even if the >systems have different partition maps, as long as the labels are common. >Like having a skeleton key to carry around.
Didn't think of that but yeah, that would also be advantageous. >It would also enable me to boot correctly if I remove my a1 partition >(Win95) even though Linux would move from a2 to a1 in that case. This is what caused me to finally break linux. I moved OpenDOS from a primary (sda2) to a logical (sda5). Although it was only an 'aesthetic' change, and my partition geometry never changed it caused a shift of all the logical drive partitions. sda11 became sda12 and linux wouldn't boot : P >It sounds like a nice addition for lilo. While your at it why not fix >lilo so it will look beyond the 1023'd cylinder. That would be a grreat >fix as well. Well sure, why don't I just rewrite it to ; > This is the problem, I know C but have never done anything for unix, let along Linux specific items. I'm not sure where I would start, and if it could be done totally in lilo, or if the kernel has to have a hand in it. (Can lilo write to /dev/ before root is mounted!?!?!) I also want to make sure I go through all the 'offical' channels, so this becomes an adopted standard and not just some guys hack. The more you think of it, the more you realize it is a very good and needed feature. This is unix man.....I shouldn't have to deal with drive letter shift! >On Fri, 2 May 1997, Dave Cinege wrote: > >> I know this isn't a Debian question, but I have to start some place. >> What list/NG would be *best* to submit a new idea for the kernel? >> (actually maybe just lilo) >> >> Problem: partition and drive shift >> Solution: Name partitions like in the old Amiga days >> >> How: Read the 'labels' of all partitions at start up and dynamiclly creates >> entries in the /dev/ dir using that 'label' name with the correct >> major/minor. >> >> Example: If I have linux installed on Logical partition 7 and put that drive >> on another system, sda7 magically becomes sdb7 and linux will not boot with >> out reconfiguring. This sucks. >> >> Example with fix: we mount /dev/linpar as root. We 'label' the linux >> partiton linpar. The kernel starts up, and scans the labels of all the >> partitions. It finds a type 83 with a label of linpar, and it creates a >> /dev/linpar entry (or symlink) to the correct major and minor. >> >> If anything moves, linpar will always be linpar, no matter if it's >> physically sda1, sda5, hdb1, etc. >> >> Taken even futher, the same works with type 06 (FAT) and 07 (HPFS) (maybe >> others) partitions using the standard DOS label for the name of the >> partitions. Similarly if you have a FAT partition you mount as /usr1 you >> don't have to worry where it physically is, as long as it is named >> correctly. >> >> I'll offer to help code this, it really looks quite easy to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Elite MicroComputers 908-541-4214 http://www.psychosis.com/emc/ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
