[Parted-maintainers] Bug#245753: Bug #245753 - overlapping partitions are not an error with BSD disklabels

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 10:37:49AM -0500, Phillip Susi wrote:
> Steve, could you explain this a bit?  How can overlapping partitions
> not be an error?

It's not an error because it's how certain proprietary Unices set up the
disks - and they would not recognize the disklabel as valid *unless* they
were set up this way.

However, the particular case for this was Tru64 Unix on Alpha.  With no
extant Alpha port, I'm not sure this is worth bothering to fix.

> Is it something like extended partitions overlapping logical partitions,
> but that's ok since the extended is just a container and not mapped at
> runtime?

They are mapped at runtime; essentially you would see /dev/sda1 (/dev/sda3?
whatever) as an alias to /dev/sda.

> How can I reproduce this?

Not easily at all.  You'd need hardware of a particular architecture, and a
copy of a proprietary Unix, to natively create a relevant disklabel or to
validate that the disklabel is compatible.

If you just want to simulate it for libparted, well, just create a BSD
disklabel with a different tool and set one of the partitions (partition 3
may be the standard?) to occupy the full disk.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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