Safety: Primary Partition and Extended (Logical) Partition
 

Hi all,

For a linux setup, which is generally safer from viruses, malware, etc:

primary partition OR.....
extendend (logical) partition

I know you would need at least one primary for the OS, but I was just curious about swap and home....should they be primary or extended..........or does it not matter?

Thanks!

malware??? how is that relevant to a partitioning scheme?? :confused: either way the simpler the better, if you don't need more than 4 partitions, then primary is the natural preference. of course things like lvm supercede conventional partitioning anyway...

splitting hairs to the max....

Extended and Logical are not the same thing. Extended is commonly described as a "container" for logical partitions but even that is incorrect. Once you start with an extended and then one or more logicals, you set up a linked list. If you look at the structure of an logical partition, it is identical to a primary. The only difference is that its boot sector has the link to the next logical (if any)

Commands affecting the partitions are system-related and requires root privileges. If you do not log in as root nobody can touch your partition table.

Keep a copy of the partition table, say a print out of "fdisk-l", if you are worried about losing it. With the record you can rebuild it.

Done mine many times and I rebuilt over 60 partitions in some disks.

The entire partition table of a hard disk is only 64 bytes long and a user can rebuild it using any of the Linux partitioning tool. The question is where is the record of it?

Doesn't matter - I prefer logicals, because I can't live with just 4 partitions.
And thisis just plain wrong.
Linux doesn't need any primaries - don't associate M$oft shortcomings to Linux.

The partitioning scheme that you use does not have any bearing upon system security. If you're careful, the same is true in both Windows and Linux.

The potential of a program depends entirely on what the operating system in question allows that program to do. In the early days of personal computing, "all programs were trusted," and the computer would obey any instruction given to it. When viruses began to appear, and especially when the Internet appeared, that no longer was acceptable. Unix (which had to withstand attacks from very-bored but very-bright geniuses at MIT and elsewhere on timesharing systems in the 70's) always had that notion, and so did Linux. With Windows it is a recent invention.

You should always run each system from a "limited user," and in the case of Windows you should not run FAT32 file systems anywhere. (Why? Because FAT32 has no concept of "file ownership.") The operating system, whether Unix or Linux or Windows, should never assume that any program or any user is "s/he who must be obeyed."

Cool.....
 

Cool...thanks for all the input. I guess as far as my simple demands go...it doesn't matter.

Thanks again folks.

Would that explain.....
 

Here is my setup:

Windows XP Pro / Linux Mepis 6 (dual boot)

Windows hdd is primary.....1st partition is NTFS, 2nd partition is FAT32 (data storage only)
Linux hdd is secondary...standard /, swap and home partion

When in Linux, if I look at the files I have stored in FAT32, I can not assign permissions to them. I know this applies to Windows, but does this also apply to Linux?

Would that explain why I kept banging my head while getting nowhere with Linux / FAT32 permission assignments? I simply couldn't set up permissions assignments in FAT32 like I could in EXT3.

/ feels dumb already.....

Fat32 is an old filing system that cannot not be protected.

Stop flogging the dead horse.

well if you were able to assign permissions and ownerships, where would that information go? clearly it has to go in the filesystem itself, so it has to be a basic function of that filesystem. Linux has no business prodividng functionality of a filesystem if it doesn't exist...

File system specifications cannot be unique to an OS, otherwise they couldn't interoperate. Just be thankful that you can mount FAT32 file systems so that you can access cameras, USB thumb drives, etc. If you want to "protect" a FAT32 file system under a different OS, mount it on a directory that only root can access...

Thanks everyone
 

Thanks everyone for your replies.....now I know....LOL