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From: evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Using fdisks (was: Re: Compiling problems, won't link)
Message-ID: <2246@ditsyda.oz>
Date: 5 Oct 89 04:06:43 GMT
References: <15214@bcsaic.UUCP> <491@escom.com> <15466@bcsaic.UUCP>
Reply-To: evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce Evans)
Organization: CSIRO DIT Sydney, Australia
Lines: 18

In article <15466@bcsaic.UUCP> paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) writes:
>I had *lots* of trouble when I was using the fdisk from DOS 3.30.
>I fixed the Minix fdisk and switched to DOS 3.10 at the same time,

DOS 3.3 orders partitions starting from the first entry, the same order as
Minix, while DOS 3.2 did the opposite. DOS 3.3 fdisk always gave me trouble
in combination with Minix fdisk. I used to use one or both fdisks to set
up partitions, then edit the magic number in partition table by hand. DOS 3.3
uses a new magic number (5) for extended DOS partions, and I used this for
Minix partitions too, since DOS 3.3 fdisk crashed on the Minix (non-)magic
number of 0. DON'T do this, because deleting the DOS partition using DOS
fdisk deletes the Minix partition too *and* writes on it.

The correct solution is to use a new magic number for Minix partitions. I
used 8, again entered by hand. Who maintains the magic number list? :-)
DOS uses 1 and 4 at least, then there are Xenix, OS/2, SysV ...
-- 
Bruce Evans		evans@ditsyda.oz.au