gparted and partitions

[sefs]

Hi there I just created the following partitions. Is I get one warning but look at the starts and ends. The following partition begins exactly where the preceding one ends, as if they are overlapping. I used gparted 0.12.0-5. Is that normal? Can writing to one partition overwrite data in the other where they overlap according to the fdisk printout below?



Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 13 102400 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 2563 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 * 2563 5113 20480000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 5113 60802 447323136 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 5113 24745 157696000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 24745 59758 281237504 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 59758 60802 8386560 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[darkod]

This is because they don't end on cylinders, as the message says.

For example, the End and Start are on cylinder 13 but that doesn't mean overlapping by itself, there are many sectors on that cylinder.

For more precise results, you can print the parted info with units in sectors:

sudo parted /dev/sda unit s print

When using sectors the Start/End should not overlap if I am not mistaken.

[coffeecat]

@sefs, you would have used "sudo fdisk -l" in Ubuntu 11.04 or earlier to have got an output in cylinders. Measuring partition boundaries in cylinders is of little or no practical use. When running fdisk in 11.04 or earlier, use "sudo fdisk -lu" to get the output in sectors. If you do so you'll find that there are no overlapping partitions, otherwise fdisk would have told you so.

In Ubuntu 11.10 and later, "sudo fdisk -l" now defaults to sectors (and not before time). It will also default to sectors with "sudo fdisk -lu" unless you tell it to report in cylinders. See man fdisk for whichever version of fdisk/Ubuntu you are using for more.

[sefs]

Yes, I checked you are both correct and, yup I am on an Ubuntu earlier than 11.04.

Thanks.

Update:
Adding c masks the warnings also by turning off dos compatibility it seems.

e.g.


sudo fdisk -luc