On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 10:01:49PM +0100, David Laight wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 03:51:13PM -0500, David Young wrote:
> > I am working to support portability of disks from one architecture to
> > another---for example, i386 to evbmips.
> > 
> > Here is a routine that I wrote to hunt a disk's partition table for the
> > "raw" partition.  The routine prefers the architecture's raw partition
> > (RAW_PART'th partition) but, allowing for the possibility that the
> > RAW_PART'th partition does not span the disk, searches for a partition
> > that does.  What do you think, do I select the raw partition using the
> > right criteria?
> 
> 
> Hmmm fix the kernels?
> The i386 (at least) kernel will always set the RAW_PART to match the
> entire disk, regardless as to what was read from the disk itself.

I still wonder whether it is correct that the raw partition's functional
role is "the partition that spans the disk", i.e., sector 0 through the
last sector.  This code in bounds_check_with_label() suggests that the
raw partition could start on an arbitrary sector,

#if RAW_PART == 3
        labelsector = lp->d_partitions[2].p_offset;
#else   
        labelsector = lp->d_partitions[RAW_PART].p_offset;
#endif  

It seems that lp->d_partitions[RAW_PART].p_offset could be replaced by
a constant, 0.

Thanks for your help.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933