[parted-devel] [parted 1.8.8] boot partitions on disks larger than 2TB

[H. Peter Anvin]

Michael Reed wrote:
> 
> Great minds....  The one thing I thought about with this idea is that
> it appears to be a mild violation of the Intel EFI spec regarding the
> content of PMBR.  Specs can change....
> 
> As I haven't tried this yet, does it require the
> "gpt" kernel parameter to override PMBR validation errors?
> 
> Can the mentioned partition layout be created with parted?
> 

Well, the EFI spec is, well, EFI-centric.  All hail our new EFI 
overlords, and all that.  Otherwise, it might have specified a 
GPT-centric BIOS boot protocol, but it didn't do so.

We can come up with another protocol, but it wouldn't be able to boot 
Redmond OSes, and $DEITY only knows how many would follow it.

The bigger issue is that the PMBR being, well, an MBR, has a 
4-paritition limit, and even two boot partitions could overflow that if 
they are noncontiguous.

	-hpa