Re: [opensuse] Use entire disk, and not a partition David Bolt wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008, Carlos E. R. wrote:-
> 
>>
>> The Wednesday 2008-02-13 at 13:51 +0200, Dirk Moolman wrote:
>>
>>>  Sorry, let me explain.
>>>
>>> We are using Oracle.  Oracle uses filesystems to create datafiles in,
>>> for example it will create files like:
>>>
>>> /oradata01/system01.dbf
>>> /oradata02/users01.dbf
>>>
>>>
>>> Now if /oradata02 (a new filesystem I created) points to the device
>>> /dev/sda, instead of /dev/sda1 (a partition on sda), will this be a
>>> problem ?
>> As far as I know, which isn't that much, there should be no problem.
> 
> There isn't. Reiserfs, ext2/3 and XFS all support file systems that use
> the entire device, not just a partition. While I haven't tried it, JFS
> may also support it as well.

They don't specifically support it...they just don't do any
sanity checking to make sure that you're NOT attempting to
use the measly 1 or 2 blocks reserved for the partition table
as part of your filesystem.

Other than checking the name specifically, there's no way
for the application to distinguish the difference between
an entire disk and a partition (they're both block devices).

In fact, I've even made ext2/3 and reiserfs filesystems
WITHIN A REGULAR FILE out in /tmp.  (Useful trick for
making floppy disks years ago).


