2010. január 11. 23:03 napon Felix Miata
On 2010/01/11 20:38 (GMT+0100) Istvan Gabor composed:
What is the maximum number of partitions that can reside on a hard disk and/or can be handled by openSUSE? (I know that max 4 primary, of which one can be extended, and the extended one has logical partitions.) I read somewhere that some version of openSUSE can handle only a limited number of partitons (~10-12) if a given driver (libata or not the libata or ?) is choosen to handle disks. But I can't recall where I read this and in what extent it is correct. I've read the release notes of 11.0, 11.1 and 11.2 but did not find anything related.
I found the reference in the meantime, it is openSUSE 10.3 release notes. It says: "libata uses /dev/sda for the first harddisk instead of /dev/hda. Disks with more than 15 partitions are not handled automatically right now. You can disable libata support by booting with the following kernel parameter: hwprobe=-modules.pata"
Using the openSUSE legacy (IDE) storage driver appropriate for your chipset, you can have up to 62 partitions with filesystems, plus the extended which has no filesystem, for a total of 63, in all openSUSE versions through 11.2.
How exactly to select use of the legacy driver during installation varies according to openSUSE version. Docs to tell how are on the published installation instructions.
I checked openSUSE 11.0, 11.1 and 11.2 documentation: In 11.0 and 11.1 the same kernel parameter is used as in 10.3. In 11.2 no kernel parameter required. (At least the doc [Reference guide] does not mention it.)
Using the newer libata storage driver, the limit is 14(+1) using stock kernels up through 11.2. As of 2.6.28 kernels, the 14(+1) libata limit has been lifted, but I don't know whether to 62(+1) or 254(+1) or more.
11.2 Reference guide says (Chapter 2.1.1): "The maximumnumber of logical partitions is 15 on SCSI, SATA, and Firewire disks and 63 on (E)IDE disks."
As a consequence, using the default libata driver in current Factory (and in the upcoming 11.3) each HD can have more partitions than most people can deal with.
Thanks, Istvan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org