Hi Bernd, Since you are working on fixing and improving FDISK, there are two features that would be great to add for end users.
During the installation of FreeDOS, when no partitions are present, the installer will try to use FDISK to automatically partition the drive. Unfortunately, the current FDISK performs this task be creating a bunch of 2GB partitions. This tends to annoy users installing on real hardware with very large disks. I propose two additional options that could be added to modify what occurs when partitions are automatically created. First, the ability to only create a single partition automatically. Leaving the the remainder of the disk unallocated. Second, an option to tell it to use FAT32 and create the partitions as large as possible. The options could be used together or separately along with the auto-partition option. I think the first option would be enough for most users most of the time. A 2gb DOS partition is huge. However if need be, the user could create an additional single large partition at a later time. However when installing to a virtual machine, the installer could then just partition the entire virtual disk as a single partition. :-) Jerome > On Feb 26, 2023, at 2:06 PM, Bernd Boeckmann via Freedos-devel > <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > Hello, > > in the last two weeks I ported Free FDISK to Watcom C and started fixing the > bugs people mentioned at the bttr forum and in the issue trackers. > > For people wanting to track the progress, I am doing the development at the > following repository: https://github.com/boeckmann/fdisk. > > I will make merge requests to upstream https://github.com/fdos/fdisk in > regular intervals and uploaded an interim build (compiled with Open Watcom) > at https://nextcloud.iww.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/s/egSe4Jyj9zx72ag > > I touched the source at many places, so I can not rule out that I have > introduced new bugs but plan to continue working on it. For the moment, > please consider it beta and dangerous. > > If you want something to be changed please send me an e-mail. I will try to > implement it if time permits it. > > User visible changes so far: > > Version 1.3.5 (unreleased) > -------------------------- > - CRITICAL: Fix FDISK loading wrong head and sector values from MBR if > operating in LBA mode. The previous incorrect behaviuor was hardcoding > them to cylinder boundaries instead of calculating them from LBA address, > resulting in corrupt partition tables especially if used in combination > with other disk utilities. > - CRITICAL: Fix different calculation errors leading to overlapping > partitions, unnessessary free space between them, or partitions exceeding > the end of the disk. > - CRITICAL: Fix a bug resulting in detecting non-existant extra cylinders > if detection of extra cylinders is enabled. > - ENHANCEMENT: Warn if user tries to use FDISK with a disk size of >2TB, > because it can not handle it properly. If the user decides to continue > the disk size is truncated to 2TB, making sure nothing bad happens by > some overflowing values. > - ENHANCEMENT: Free FDISK now compiles with Open Watcom C. > > Greetings, Bernd > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
