win2k + QNX

[jhroyer]

Hi,

I found some serious problem with w2k and qnx.

77 and 78 partition are shown as FAT partition in w2k,
79 is shown as FREE partition.

So the major problem is only with 77/78 partitions (QNX4).

The problems starts when these 77/78 partitions becomes almost full,
w2k stops finding them as healthy FAT partitions and actually start
to fix them when you boot w2k.

The result is that some data is changed/lost on your 77/78 partitions.

I can’t believe how w2k can shows non-dos/win partitions as FAT partition
it’s insane…

I’m currently trying to find out partition number that are NOT shown as FAT
partition by w2k, as far as i tested i only found 79 who shows as FREE.

If you know how to avoid that major problem or if you know partition number
that doesn’t show as FAT partition in w2k please tell…

[Daryl_Low]

Yes, to my dismay, I’ve discovered the exact same problem. As a temporary
fix, you can make the QNX partition into FAT, make it bootable and install
RTP via Windows. The real way to fix this is getting Microsoft to fix Win2K
(assuming this was an accident in the first place).

Daryl Low

“jhroyer” <nospam28@joher.com> wrote in message
news:Voyager.010401220024.466979B@ip10.joher.com…

Hi,

I found some serious problem with w2k and qnx.

77 and 78 partition are shown as FAT partition in w2k,
79 is shown as FREE partition.

So the major problem is only with 77/78 partitions (QNX4).

The problems starts when these 77/78 partitions becomes almost full,
w2k stops finding them as healthy FAT partitions and actually start
to fix them when you boot w2k.

The result is that some data is changed/lost on your 77/78 partitions.

I can’t believe how w2k can shows non-dos/win partitions as FAT partition
it’s insane…

I’m currently trying to find out partition number that are NOT shown as
FAT
partition by w2k, as far as i tested i only found 79 who shows as FREE.

If you know how to avoid that major problem or if you know partition
number
that doesn’t show as FAT partition in w2k please tell…

[jhr]

In fact there is no problem with 79 partitions which are found as FREE by
w2k,
the only problem is others 77/78 which are QNX4 and I can’t install them on
FAT.

I’m still looking for partition type number that wouldn’t be shown as FAT or
would be
shown as FREE in w2k but finding them is a pain, I need to fdisk, change the
partition type
boot w2k and check.

As of now I only found 79 that shows as FREE , that’s really such an
incredible chance
for RTP users.

The other thing I found is that even linux/freebsd/novell partition are
shown as windows
partition but due to their different filesystem, windows doesn’t recognize
FAT on them.

W2k seems to only recognize FAT filesystem on QNX filesystem partition.

So QNX is mostly the only OS subjected to this bug that makes w2k corrupts
your foreign
partition.

Because to fix a partition w2k needs to find it as a dos/win partition
(every partition type beside 79)
AND to find some FAT filesystem on it (every time with a QNX filesystem) AND
to find it bad (when data
start to be written some place on the QNX partition, mostly near the end of
the partition as far as I tested)

Regards.

“Daryl Low” <dlow@student.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
news:9aac1j$l9r$1@inn.qnx.com…

Yes, to my dismay, I’ve discovered the exact same problem. As a temporary
fix, you can make the QNX partition into FAT, make it bootable and install
RTP via Windows. The real way to fix this is getting Microsoft to fix
Win2K
(assuming this was an accident in the first place).

Daryl Low

[Rick_Lake1]

jhr wrote:
[…]

So QNX is mostly the only OS subjected to this bug that makes w2k corrupts
your foreign
partition.

Because to fix a partition w2k needs to find it as a dos/win partition
(every partition type beside 79)
AND to find some FAT filesystem on it (every time with a QNX filesystem) AND
to find it bad (when data
start to be written some place on the QNX partition, mostly near the end of
the partition as far as I tested)

{

I can here BG now…

“…That damned QNX is becoming a serious treat to us. What shall we
do… I got it! Lets modify our system to recognize QNX partitions and
wait until it gets almost full and then kill it without warning,
frustrating that person who dears to install QNX on OUR machine. It
worked before on Netscape…”

[David_Hawley]

Previously, Bill Caroselli wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.os:

While I assume that this comment was given tongue-in-cheek, I don’t
doubt that it is very far from the truth. Is anyonw from QSSL
looking into this?

–
Bill Caroselli - Sattel Global Networks
1-818-709-6201 ext 122

I can here BG now…

“…That damned QNX is becoming a serious treat to us. What shall
we do… I got it! Lets modify our system to recognize QNX
partitions and wait until it gets almost full and then kill it
without warning, frustrating that person who dears to install QNX
on OUR machine. It worked before on Netscape…”

I have a hard time believing that MS really has put a QNX disk driver into it’s OS - and without one, how does it know that the drive is nearly full? There must be something else going on here.

–
David L. Hawley D.L. Hawley and Associates

[Daryl_Low]

“David Hawley” <David.L.Hawley@computer.org> wrote in message
news:Voyager.010405145625.716818A@shadow.hawley.com…

I have a hard time believing that MS really has put a QNX disk driver into
it’s OS - and without one, how does it know that the drive is nearly full?

There must be something else going on here.

I think that Win2K corrupts the QNX4 volume regardless of how full it is.
Just that the places it corrupts don’t affect the volume until it gets near
full. Also, the corruption seems to heavily depend on the parition size
which probably means it’s misinterpreting some bits somewhere as block size
of volume size.

For example, on my system, after a stock install of RTP Patch A onto a 1 GB
partition, the corruption hits an inode entry and a Photon graphics driver
in qnxbase.ifs (causing Photon to crash). If I use a 500 MB partition, the
corruption strikes elsewhere, I don’t know where.

Intentional or not, it only takes about 4 bytes in the Win2K chkdsk program
to make this happen (ie. add 77, 78, 79 to the FAT parition ID list) or some
equivalent code. The simple act of repairing a QNX4 volume as FAT is good
enough to screw things up in strange ways.

Daryl Low

[Rennie_Allen2]

They wouldn’t need a whole QNX disk driver, just enough code to find the
bitmap (the code to do this is less than a days work - and certainly
insignificant in size, compared to the other 35 million lines of
source). What else is all that code good for if one can’t hide ones
dirty tricks in it ?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Hawley [mailto:David.L.Hawley@computer.org]
Posted At: Thursday, April 05, 2001 2:56 PM
Posted To: os
Conversation: win2k + QNX
Subject: Re: win2k + QNX


Previously, Bill Caroselli wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.os:

While I assume that this comment was given tongue-in-cheek, I don’t
doubt that it is very far from the truth. Is anyonw from QSSL
looking into this?

–
Bill Caroselli - Sattel Global Networks
1-818-709-6201 ext 122

I can here BG now…

“…That damned QNX is becoming a serious treat to us. What shall
we do… I got it! Lets modify our system to recognize QNX
partitions and wait until it gets almost full and then kill it
without warning, frustrating that person who dears to install QNX
on OUR machine. It worked before on Netscape…”

I have a hard time believing that MS really has put a QNX disk driver
into it’s OS - and without one, how does it know that the drive is
nearly full? There must be something else going on here.

–
David L. Hawley D.L. Hawley and Associates

[Bill_Caroselli1]

While I assume that this comment was given tongue-in-cheek, I don’t doubt
that it is very far from the truth. Is anyonw from QSSL looking into this?

–
Bill Caroselli - Sattel Global Networks
1-818-709-6201 ext 122

I can here BG now…

“…That damned QNX is becoming a serious treat to us. What shall we
do… I got it! Lets modify our system to recognize QNX partitions and
wait until it gets almost full and then kill it without warning,
frustrating that person who dears to install QNX on OUR machine. It
worked before on Netscape…”

[Bill_Caroselli1]

Who ever said they were intelligently modifying the partition. They could
be just randomly toggling a bit somewhere on the partition.

–

–
Bill Caroselli - Sattel Global Networks
1-818-709-6201 ext 122


“David Hawley” <David.L.Hawley@computer.org> wrote in message
news:Voyager.010405145625.716818A@shadow.hawley.com…

Previously, Bill Caroselli wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.os:
While I assume that this comment was given tongue-in-cheek, I don’t
doubt that it is very far from the truth. Is anyonw from QSSL
looking into this?

–
Bill Caroselli - Sattel Global Networks
1-818-709-6201 ext 122

I can here BG now…

“…That damned QNX is becoming a serious treat to us. What shall
we do… I got it! Lets modify our system to recognize QNX
partitions and wait until it gets almost full and then kill it
without warning, frustrating that person who dears to install QNX
on OUR machine. It worked before on Netscape…”

I have a hard time believing that MS really has put a QNX disk driver into
it’s OS - and without one, how does it know that the drive is nearly full?

There must be something else going on here.

–
David L. Hawley D.L. Hawley and Associates

[jhr]

Yes, in fact it doesn’t try to know what is on the partition it just read at
a certain place that
make it understand that it is a healthy-FAT partition according to what it
is reading.

One day or another your QNX4 will write at the place where w2k is reading
this information,
and next time w2k (on startup) will try to read at this place it won’t find
it healthy anymore
and start fixing it by modifiing the bytes that were written at that place
by QNX.

So you will loose data.

Here is what I think, I think MS know that and that’s why he decided to
handle 79 (QNX RTP)
partition as FREE partition to avoid this problem, but MS didn’t know about
77/78 old QNX4
partition.

I tried most of the partition type I know of, all of them are shown as
windows partitions ONLY
partition 79 is shown as FREE it’s intentionally done because QNX is prolly
one of the only
filsystem to put FAT-like headers somewhere on its partition, that’s why to
avoid this problem
MS did an exeption and treat/recognize it as a FREE partition.

But the problem remains for 77/78 partitions (QNX4 or secondary QNX RTP
partition)


“Bill Caroselli” <Bill@Sattel.com> wrote in message
news:9aj3r4$6u5$1@inn.qnx.com…

Who ever said they were intelligently modifying the partition. They could
be just randomly toggling a bit somewhere on the partition.