[OpenBIOS] How to check if it's a PReP partition
Lennart Sorensen
lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Fri Oct 21 16:52:52 CEST 2011
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 03:05:51PM -0400, Paulo Flabiano Smorigo wrote:
> How can I know if a partition is securely a PReP partition? Besides
> check the partition type (41), is there another test that I can do
> to confirm that?
>
> At the page bellow are two other codes used for the same code of PReP (41):
>
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html
>
> 41 Linux/MINIX (sharing disk with DRDOS)
> 41 Personal RISC Boot
> 41 PPC PReP (Power PC Reference Platform) Boot
>
> What kind of checks can I do? Can I use the partition size or if
> it's the first of the disk as parameters to check it?
I don't believe there is anything you can do.
The contents can be anything (mine contains the raw grub image for
booting).
rceng03:~# file -s /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped
Perhaps you can check if it contains executable code, since that is
certainly true of how the partition is used by IBM. I imagine that
would not be true of the linux/minix one (unless I suppose the bootloader
happens to be embedded at the start of the partition in a non raw way.
I believe x86 uses raw executeable code in that case, unlike PReP which
seems to have ELF binaries instead). No idea about Personal RISC Boot.
rceng03:~# parted /dev/sda print
Model: IBM ST3146356SS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 147GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 8225kB 8193kB primary boot, prep
2 8389kB 1009MB 1000MB primary raid
3 1009MB 141GB 140GB primary raid
4 141GB 147GB 5806MB primary raid
rceng03:~# parted /dev/sdb print
Model: IBM ST3146356SS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 147GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 8225kB 8193kB primary boot, prep
2 8389kB 1009MB 1000MB primary raid
3 1009MB 141GB 140GB primary raid
4 141GB 147GB 5806MB primary raid
Mine happens to be partition one, but I think that is just because if
habit on my part.
I think the size of 8MiB in my case is simply the minimum for one
cylinder.
--
Len Sorensen
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