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From: Grant <o...@grrr.id.au>
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux.slackware
Subject: Re: 40 LinuxPartitions to USB external HDD?
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:19:03 +1100
Organization: scattered bugs
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On Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:38:59 +0100, Kees Theunissen <theun...@rijnh.nl> wrote:

>Grant wrote:
>> On Thu, 8 Nov 2012 22:32:19 +0000 (UTC), Avoid9...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>> Also, I want to have more than 16 partitions [for certin reasons]
>>> and eg. AFAIK Slakware's <lilo script> assumes < 17 partitions;
>>> even it I don't YET anticipate booting from this USB hard-drive.
>>
>> You may lose partitions >16.  This happened to me way back, but
>> I don't remember the details, it used to work a very long time ago.
>
>That could have happened when switching over from the now
>deprecated old ide subsystem in the kernel to the newer libata
>subsystem. Ide device names changed from /dev/hdXX to /dev/sdXX
>with the libata subsystem.
>There used to be a limit of 63 partitions on ide disks and
>15 partitions on scsi disks.

That could explain it :)
>
...
>This limit doesn't exist anymore since kernel 2.6.28 (released in
>December 2008). The device numbering scheme has been extended to
>use major and minor device numbers greater than 255.

Yes, I haven't tried lots of partitions for years since I had some go 
missing -- no data loss, just return to older system and merge data, 
reduce partitions.  I agree it likely was during that hda -> sda period.

I didn't stop to work out why, just limited max partitions.

Seems idea of separate read-only /usr is fading with some of the new 
stuff the large distros are pushing.
...
>Slackware moved to the libata subsystem with the release of
>slackware-13.1, kernel 2.6.33.4.
>The limited number of minor scsi device numbers wasn't an issue
>anymore with that kernel. But if you compile your own kernels
>and switched over to libata with older kernels --or maybe with
>the wrong combination of options-- this might have hit you.

Yes, I've switched over to libata for a while yet, holding the 
view that the slackware kernel is there to let one boot the machine 
and compile one's own kernel to suit the hardware ;)

Right now I have a 'new' machine to play with, it has a spare HDD 
raided from another box, not yet in use.  I'll have a look at lots 
of logical partitions to see how it goes.

Grant.
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Kees.