[Gllug] Win&Lin accessible filesystems

[Pete Ryland]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 10:21:34AM -0000, Paul Brazier wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Is the partition scheme the more low-level hardware/BIOS dependent part
> that has to be understood by the BIOS in order to boot, and the
> filesystem is totally a software thing that is just how the files are
> stored?
> 
> I notice that Linux has "Linux" and "Linux swap" partition types but
> that the former can have ext2, ext3, reiserfs etc filesystems on them,
> whereas Windows seems to have one partition type for each filesystem.
> Could Linux not have a "swapfs" on a "Linux" partition - does it really
> need a separate "Linux swap" partition type?

The partition type flag in the partition table (which is located in the mbr
(the first sector of a hdd), or in the first sector of an extended
partition) is (under linux) merely an indication of what type of filesystem
that partition contains.  It is probably important to operating systems that
don't have a mount type explicitly stated like linux has in /etc/fstab.

Pete
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