Subject: bug#17994: Linux RAID MBR type code

From: Phillip Susi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:55:16 -0400

On 7/14/2014 2:33 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> I haven't test it, but as Apple long ago deprecated fstab in favor
> of automounting anything it recognizes, I'd expect it would
> automount this configuration. But what does happen isn't as
> important as what legitimately can happen now or in the future
> which is automounting because this is invited due to the use of the
> wrong type code.

What can legitimately happen now or in the future is anything and
everything since partition type codes are not standardized.  The
question is, does apple actually look at the type code, or do they
work like Linux does and probe the actual contents?  Since the windows
ext2 driver was written by the Linux community, I would at least
expect it to work like Linux does, and not give a hoot about the
partition type code.  In any case, if they already deal with 0xfd
correctly, why change?

> That is a completely disingenuous reading. If you take the entire 
> page as a whole, it's saying you can choose 0xfd with 0.9
> metadata, or you can choose 0xda with 1.x metadata. It is not
> suggesting use of 0xfd with 1.x metadata.

It is pretty clear to me that it is simply a suggestion and they make
it clear that it really doesn't matter.  Since it doesn't really
matter, and there appears to be no reason to add a new code instead of
sticking with 0xfd, I'm disinclined to needlessly complicate the
partitioning process any further for no gain.

> And this has sufficiently explained the conflict with using either 
> 0xfd or 0x83, even on Linux.

What conflict?  The only conflict I am aware of is user confusion over
which one to use, which will only be made worse by adding yet another
code.