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

[Michael Reed]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 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.

We probably don't need another protocol, just one that works and for which
the partitioning can be easily created and maintained.

> 
> 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

I do consider it to be quite reasonable to require that the bootable
partitions, all of them, reside in the first 2TB of space.

Does parted have the capability of creating this hybrid partitioning
scheme?  ("No" is a perfectly fine answer, today.)  This is an issue
which is just beginning to rear its ugly head at SGI and I'd like to
help us move toward a viable, more or less supported solution sooner
rather than later.

Mike