From: sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie) Subject: Re: fdisk/ext2fs/64Meg-limit problem Date: 15 May 1993 22:34:01 GMT
On 14 May 93 01:43:24 GMT, marcf@nexus.yorku.ca (Marc G Fournier) said:
>>***ALWAYS REBOOT AFTER CHANGING THE PARTITION TABLES!!!!!!***
> is this a 'feature' of Linux that will eventually go away?
> again, based on experience with Commercial Unix's...it only seems to
> be a requirement (although not to disturbing of one) of Linux...or
> does the company I work for just get luck because we don't reboot
> after adding/changing fdisk parameters?
The trouble is that Linux associates a separate device for each
partition during system startup. Any repartitioning normally needs a
reboot so that these devices can be reassigned.
There is, however, a way to force Linux to reread the device partition
tables; the BLKRRPART ioctl does this. I don't know of any
applications which currently use it, though; and it is rather
dangerous, since any operation which changes the device on which the
root is mounted would be lethal. However, as long as the
repartitioning doesn't renumber any mounted partitions, you might be
OK.
Cheers,
Stephen.