Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!botter!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Hard disk partitions?
Message-ID: <1784@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 13 Dec 87 12:13:15 GMT
References: <5500001@ucf-cs.ucf.edu>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 21

In article <5500001@ucf-cs.ucf.edu> tony@ucf-cs.ucf.edu writes:
>If partition 1 is set up for DOS and 2 for Minix, with #2 mounted under
>/usr, Minix crashes unpredictably.  

One thing to remember is that the partition size for partition 1 is one
smaller than for partition 2.

Another possibility is that the MINIX fdisk and the DOS fdisk don't agree
on the meaning of the partition table.  If everyone would create their
partitions from lowest cylinder to highest there would be no ambiguity.
However, if the order in the partition table is different from the cylinder
order, there are at least three interpretations.
  1. Table slot 1 is partition 1
  2. Innermost cylinder is partition 1
  3. Outermost cylinder is partition 1
I believe that the combination of MINIX, DOS, XENIX and Microport together
exhaust the entire list of possibilities.  I don'know if this is related
to your problem (which I otherwise can't understand), but it is worth 
keeping in mind.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)