FreeLists / openbeosstorage / [openbeosstorage] Re: Amiga RDB

["Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Ingo Weinhold" <bonefish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Now, balancing the arguments I tend to like 1) most. I would 
> > > perhaps revise this judgement, if Axel told us, that the reserved 
> > > space stuff
> > > is indeed used in practice and the size of the reserved space is
> > > usually rather large (like dozens of MBs, which I strongly 
> > > doubt). 
> > > Then I would favor 3), for I really don't like 2). Sorry Tyler, I 
> > > can't 
> > > get to like the virtual partitions.
> > Yes, I think I currently like 1) best as well. Otherwise, I can 
> > just 
> > as 
> > easily handle 2) or 3), and since 2) has not gone over very well at 
> > all, I would go for 3) as well. :-)
> OK, it seems we could all live rather well with 1) (unless Axel 
> vetos). 
> So, let's go for it.

I finally got around checking it out, and I have to partially veto:
a) that feature is used,
b) but it seems always to be used in the same way

All my partitions have 2 reserved blocks at the beginning, and zero at 
the end. I guess those two blocks are generally reserved by the drive 
setup application for some kind of boot loader, but I am not sure (but 
it looks like it).
Furthermore, the first longword of an Amiga FS (in that reserved 
region) seems to be file system ID as specified in the partition 
structure - but it doesn't have to be; the linux file systems even seem 
to use that space... (but it could also contain just garbage in this 
case).
I am not yet sure how to handle the real partition size - I'll have a 
deeper look at Amiga FFS though, and then I might know. Right now, I 
would think that it's best to simply let the file system decide what to 
do with this extra space; at least it looks like the contents differ on 
different file systems - that means, that the partition would span the 
whole space including the reserved areas.
I would just be nice if the file system could access the space 
information, though.

Adios...
   Axel.