Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: "special device /dev/hdc does not exist". What does this mean?

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Mick,

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 06:22:23PM +0100, Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 20 July 2008, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > So the kernel guys have decided that nobody would ever want more than 15
> > partitions on a drive.  

> From memory I recall that this has always been the limit for SATA/SCSI
> drives.  For ATA drives I think it is 63?

If I do # ls -l /dev/hd[gh], I get:

    brw-rw----  1 root disk 34,  0 2005-02-26 06:43 /dev/hdg
    brw-rw----  1 root disk 34, 64 2005-02-26 06:43 /dev/hdh

, which does indeed suggest a max of 63.  However, there's nothing on the
disk partition structure (which is basically a chain of extended
partitions across the entire disk) to limit this.

> Not sure if this is a Linux OS kernel restriction - what is the maximum number 
> that MSWindows see?

What's MSWindows?  ;-)

Proabably a lot less than 63.

However, the limit of 15 (which I didn't know about before) is a good
reason for me not to migrate to SATA disks.  I _like_ having lots of
partitions ~1 - 4 Gb.  It was trivial for me to clear a 4 Gb partition
for a trial installation of Gentoo (which, by the way, I'm expecting to
expand into my prime system - my Debian Sarge is beginning to feel very
tired).

Shoe horning IDE disks into the S{ATA,CSI}'s 15 partition limit seems an
unkind thing to do.

> Mick

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).