Re: GPT vs MBR partitions

On 13/08/06, Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 01:04:09PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > Is there some way to bring some sanity back?  I regularly end up messing up
> > one or the other partition table, so it's rather frustrating.
> >
> > Can I somehow throw away the MBR table?  Or as a second choice I'd settle
> > with throwing away the GPT table.  Any hint?
>
> To boot with the BootCamp method, you need to have the MBR table
> available. To be able to apply firmware updates from within Mac OS X,
> you need to have the GPT table. So, it's really best to have the dual
> setup, weird as it is. However, for sanity's sake, if you modify only
> the GPT table, you can then choose the "Start Partitioning Tool" option
> in rEFIt, which will sync it to the MBR partition for you. The only
> problem with that tool is that, since FAT32/NTFS/Linux partitions all
> use the same GPT partition type, it assumes they're all FAT32 when
> generating the MBR. Linux shouldn't care about this one way or the
> other, but fixing it via fdisk afterwards (either from Mac OS X or from
> a boot CD) works fine.

Is it possible to have the GPT and MBR not completely in sync? AFAIK
the MBR can only contain 4 partitions and this is very limiting. My
idea is to have 4 partitions in common and some more partitions in GPT
only.

I would like to have something like that:
MBR:
0 firmware
1 Mac OS X
2 windows?
3 Linux boot

GPT
The 4 first partitions are the same as in the MBR
4 Linux swap
5 Linux home

Since Linux knows about GPT it should see all the partitions.

Will that work?

Thanks,

-- 
  Dr. Ludovic Rousseau

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