Hello,
I have a quick question. I was reading that when you run the fdisk command and get the results below that if you are going to carve out a partition you only need to be carve out /sda1 and /sda6 b/c the extended partition is basically /sda5 and /sda6. Is that correct?
/dev/sda1 boot 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 82 Swap
/dev/sda6 83 Linux
Thanks,
Mark
Not necessarily. Did you do
/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda
> p
?
I'd expect to see output that looked more like this
Disk /dev/sda 36.7 GB, 36703934464 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4462 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 1045 8289540 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 1046 4462 27447052+ 83 Linux
That tells me what, if anything, overlaps. Your extended partition may or may not include sda5 and sda6.
-David
If you are not interested in the content of the swap partition you are right.
Mark,
First, for carving, you may find the output of this command easier to work with;
sfdisk -l -uS dd.img
Second, go for the low hanging fruit, but don't ignore the higher fruit. Translation = don't blindly trust the output of fdisk or sfdisk, or any other partition table interpreter.
For example, you could have a partition table that looks like;
root@fbcd # sfdisk -l -uS
Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
/dev/sda1 182980350 187173314 4192965 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 * 96390 75505499 75409110 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 75923190 144649259 68726070 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 147573090 182980349 35407260 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 161517573 169710659 8193087 db CP/M / CTOS / …
/dev/sda6 169710723 173903624 4192902 dd Unknown
/dev/sda7 173903688 182980349 9076662 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda8 147573153 161517509 13944357 83 Linux
And you could write your data.
Then, you go and change the partition table to be different, perhaps;
Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
/dev/sda1 182980350 187173314 4192965 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 * 96390 75505499 75409110 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 75923190 144649259 68726070 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 147573090 182980349 35407260 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 161517573 169710659 8193087 db CP/M / CTOS / …
/dev/sda6 169710723 182980349 9076662 82 Linux Swap
The other partitions are still on the disk, the data still resides within them, but the partition tool doesn't know this, it only interprets the partition records in the partition table.
No, you didn't say you wouldn't examine the physical device, but I just know that some folks don't scan the device to validate the partition records. Blind trust can hurt …
regards,
farmerdude