Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!inetg1!dprrhb From: dprrhb@inetg1.ARCO.COM (Reginald H. Beardsley) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: (PC/AT) Minix hard disk partition ???'s Message-ID: <1991Apr30.153224.12972@Arco.COM> Date: 30 Apr 91 15:32:24 GMT References: <1991Apr18.134014.46258@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> <1991Apr24.175619.2371@Arco.COM> <1991Apr29.164329.1223@syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> Sender: dprrhb@inetg1 (Reginald H. Beardsley) Organization: ARCO Oil & Gas Company Lines: 30 I have no real disagreement with what Bruce has to say. There certainly are difficulties with just changing the partion table size. I did point out that other disk utilities are likely to step on the sort of approach I outlined. Since I do not use them, they are not an issue for me. I have spent a good bit of time looking at different schemes for handling the device boot sector. Many of them become quite ugly trying to accomodate everyone else's idea of what do do to get around fundamental design limitations. The book "Writing DOS Device Drivers in C" gives as good a discussion of the boot sector layout as I've been able to find. It certainly does not tell you what everyone else has done to the first 512 bytes on the disk drive. I personally consider software that steps on something as fundamental as the device bootstrap without warning to be bad design. I prefer not to use such software. As for what Minix should or should not do, I think that is best left to the owner of the system. The whole reason I spend my time with Minix is because the source code is available so that I can make it do what I want. As the author of many important enhancements to Minix, Bruce ranks in my mind second only to Andy when "official Minix modifications" are being discussed. However, on my system he does not get a vote (nor does Andy :-) ). I am paying the price of rolling my own OS because I want control of how and what things get done. If it breaks, its all my fault and no one else's problem. -- Reginald H. Beardsley ARCO Information Services Plano, TX 75075 Phone: (214)-754-6785 Internet: dprrhb@arco.com