On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 22:52:57 (-0400), Felix Miata wrote: > David Wright composed on 2016-07-07 20:03 (UTC-0500): > > >On Thu 07 Jul 2016 at 20:03:46 (-0400), Felix Miata wrote: > > >>Grub and Grub2 count drives starting with 0 (as a BIOS does). > > >>Grub also counts partitions starting with 0. > > >>Grub2 inexplicably counts partitions starting with 1. > > >I'm afraid I can't go back further than 1996 with Debian (but that was > >the first release, 1.1 or buzz). At that time, Debian counted > >partitions from 1, as did lilo. The old Grub definitely stood out > >in starting from 0, which is why they spelled it out so carefully > >in the docs, eg: > >https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/Naming-convention.html#Naming-convention > > >Now they have fallen into line, the Grub manual has to make sure you > >realise it has been changed, eg > >https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Naming-convention > > >The most modern fdisk program I have is gdisk (for GPT disks) and it > >counts partitions from 1. Is there some newfangled disk subsystem > >that's passed me by which starts counting at zero? > > I'm not aware of any that are "newfangled", but all the SCSI hosts > I'm familiar with do as does a PC BIOS, count starting with 0, > usually making the host, the eighth possible device in a SCSI chain, > ID7.
Yes, my first Debian systems all had 2GB SCSI disks, so I'm quite familiar with that. But that's counting disks, not partitions. What I'm trying to find out is why you wrote "Grub2 *inexplicably* counts partitions starting with 1" (my emphasis) when everything I've ever seen counts partitions from 1 (with the notable exception of old Grub). I think they've been counted from 1 since their invention. However, I've fallen behind in disk technology, still using PATA disks except for caddies. Hence my question about newfangled devices. Do any of those expect you to count their partitions from other than 1? I'm just flailing around for a reason why old Grub might have done what it did, because you haven't yet given one. Cheers, David.
