Re: Partition support for FAT file system

[Frank Pagliughi <fpagliughi@mindspring.com>]

Nick Garnett wrote:
> Frank Pagliughi <fpagliughi@mindspring.com> writes:
>
>   
>> So then it's the IDE driver that should scan the partition table on
>> the physical disk and export separate mount points for each? Would
>> that be the proper way to go?
>>     
>
> No, the generic disk layer already does all of this. It reads the MBR
> from the disk, looks for a partition table and sets up its data
> structures accordingly. 
>
> Take a look in io/disk/current/src/disk.c, specifically the read_mbr()
> and read_partition() functions. And the code in disk_lookup() which
> selects the right partition.
>
> In the same way that it shouldn't be done at too high a level,
> partitioning shouldn't be done at too low a level either. Partitions
> can exist on a wide variety of media, not just IDE disks.
>
>
>   
By the way...  The main reason I had trouble with this, is because the 
one disk test application, fatfs1, doesn't work out of the box. The FAT 
test uses disks named like "/dev/disk0/"  whereas the IDE package 
defaults to names like "/dev/hda/". Is one naming convention preferred 
over the other? Should we change the default for one or the other?


- Frank