Linux Sparc & Sun Disklabel Issue

[Artem Kachitchkine]

 > fdisk /dev/sda
 >
> Disk /dev/sda (Sun disk label): 27 heads, 107 sectors, 49242 cylinders
> 
>    Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1             0        43     62113+  83  Linux native
> /dev/sda2  u         43        44      1444+  82  Linux swap
> /dev/sda3             0     49242  71130069    5  Whole disk
> /dev/sda4            44     26410  38085687   83  Linux native
> /dev/sda5         26410     49242  32980824   83  Linux native

I don't think you can have DOS partitions on sparc. My guess is that Linux fdisk 
fakes the Id column, because there is no such thing as partition id in VTOC. 
There's the tag:

/*
  * Partition identification tags
  */
#define V_UNASSIGNED    0x00            /* unassigned partition */
#define V_BOOT          0x01            /* Boot partition */
#define V_ROOT          0x02            /* Root filesystem */
#define V_SWAP          0x03            /* Swap filesystem */
#define V_USR           0x04            /* Usr filesystem */
#define V_BACKUP        0x05            /* full disk */
...

5 is for the whole disk, and the 3rd VTOC slice is almost always that, a.k.a. 
the overlap slice.

Anyway, regardless of whether VTOC spans the entire disk or contained within a 
DOS partition, it does not appear that HAL's Linux backend supports it yet.

-Artem.