[Parted-maintainers] Bug#292111: installation-reports: FAILURE TO ... [proposed solution]

[Andrew Clausen]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2005 at 09:41:32AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > /dev/hde2            7655       19930    98605773    5  Extended
> > /dev/hde3            8990        9254     2128581   82  Linux swap

How was partition 3 created?

> > The problem is that this assumes that an extended partition like
> > /dev/hde2 must be contiguous.
> > Since /dev/hde3 is in the hole in the middle of /dev/hde2, the result
> > is that /dev/hde3 begins before /dev/hde2, and so the constraint
> > insists that /dev/hde2 must end after /dev/hde3.  This constraint
> > is not satisfied.

Agreed.

> > Of course, this is probably not safe for most situations,
> > and so it would be better for me to try the other plan of simply deleting
> > my /dev/hde2, and then using parted to recreate it as a logical partition.
> > Maybe it would be nice if parted reported when it detected a hole
> > in an extended partition:
> > disk.c(_partition_get_overlap_constraint):
> > ADD BEFORE LINE 1247:
> >   if (walk->geom.start <= geom->start && walk->geom.end >= geom->end
> > 	&& walk->type == PED_PARTITION_EXTENDED
> > 	&& part->type == PED_PARTITION_NORMAL)
> >     PRINT_PED_WARNING("Extended partition has a hole in it, occupied
> > 			by a physical partition.");
> > Or is my situation too unusual to worry about?

It sounds unusual.  I would accept a patch that offered to convert the
primary partition into a logical one...

Thanks,
Andrew