[Gllug] Win&Lin accessible filesystems

[Bruce Richardson]

On 12/13/01, 10:21:34 AM, "Paul Brazier" <pbrazier at cosmos-uk.co.uk> wrote 
regarding RE: [Gllug] Win&Lin accessible filesystems :

> > Well if you're being picky about it, vfat is the name of the
> > filesystem,
> > and you can put that filesystem on any partition you like, regardless
> > of the partition type flag. There's nothing to stop you having a vfat
> > filesystem on a Linux parittion (or, indeed an Amoeba or HURD
> > or LANstep
> > parition, or any other of their wierd and wonderful types available)

> I'm a little unclear what the distinction between partition and
> filesystem actually is.

Partitions organise the disk into sections and that's all, really. 
Filesystems (in this context) organise the data within the partitions.  
When you create a FAT32 partition you are actually just creating a 
partition and labelling it with a number that indicates the type of 
filesystem that it is *intended* to hold.  You could then create an ext2 
filesystem within it.

For the sake of sanity, though, it's best to match the filesystem to the 
type indicated by the partition table.  Applications tend to assume the 
partition table is telling the truth rather than analyse the partition to 
check.  Once, after upgrading and re-organising a Linux box, I activated 
a swap partition that had previously been an ext2 partition without 
running mkswap to create a swap fs.  It chugged away for a couple of 
weeks on the ext2 fs before I noticed.

-- 

Bruce

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