=== DISCLAIMER === I allow you to use all software in this package freely under the condition that I am in no way responsible for any damage or loss you may suffer. >> You should be aware of the fact that PARTFILT might << >> damage the data stored on your hard disks. << If you cannot agree to these conditions, you should NOT use PARTFILT ! I CANNOT guarantee that PARTFILT will work for you. However I've done my best to test the program and I can only say that It works for me. Henk Kelder henk.kelder@capgemini.nl Certified daddy (by my kids) My homepage for the latest version: http://www.os2ss.com/information/kelder/index.html NOTE: Users report me PARTFILT does not work with Warp Server for E-Business. Appearanlty, the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) can do some of the tasks that PARTFILT does, like creating drive letters for non-standard partitions like FAT32 and Linux Partitions. PARTFILT.FLT ============ Before anything else: PARTFILT is based on the excelent work of Deon van der Westhuysen. I only made minor modification to it. The source code is available under GPL conditions. Please send me a mail if you want the sources. My current homepage lacks space to store the sources. Also, Once PARTFILT is installed FDISK, Partition Magic and other Partition tools can no longer be trusted. Do not use these tools once PARTFILT is installed. PARTFILT.FLT is a BASEDEV FILTER device that as able to presents (fakes) partition types that are normally unsupported by OS/2 in such a way to OS/2 that IFS's can be loaded on these partitions. Such virtualized partition will always be mounted after the non-virualized partitions. Currently (as far as I know) the filter can be used for two IFS's: This one, FAT32.IFS and the Linux IFS. Beside that, PARTFILT.FLT can be used for other purposes such as making not-visible partitions visible or using multiple primary partitions. PARTFILT.FLT supports the following options: /Q Load quietly /W Enables Writing to the faked partitions. Without this option the faked partitions are read-only. /A This option does two things: - Disables OS/2 to access all partitions, but: - Virtualizes (or fakes) all known partitions. Known partitions are the normal FAT partitions, IFS (=mainly HPFS) partitions and the partitions specified with the /P option. All primary partitions of known types are also virtualized, and will be accessable from OS/2. This option must be used in conjunction with the /M option. When this option is specified, the /W option is automatically set, because otherwise OS/2 will not boot. /M - Specifies the order in which partitions must be mounted. Must be used with the /M option. WARNING: Incorrect usage of the /A and /M options could make your system unbootable. => USING THE /A and /M OPTIONS is not advised! <= if you need more information on these options please see: http://www.os2ss.com/information/kelder/ or just read on. /P This is option is used to tell PARTFILT which partition type are to be faked. You should NOT use partition types already supported by OS/2 since this would result in a single partition being mounted two times. The list should consist of partition type numbers (in hexadecimal), separated by comma's. The partition type number are as follows: 01 FAT12 (supported by OS/2) 02 XENIX_1 03 XENIX_2 04 FAT16 (supported by OS/2) 05 EXTENDED 06 HUGE (supported by OS/2) 07 IFS (supported by OS/2) 0A BOOTMANAGER 0B FAT32 0C FAT32_XINT13 or FAT32X 0E XINT13 0F XINT13_EXTENDED 41 PREP 63 UNIX 83 LINUX 10 Hidden partition (bits OR'd with partition type) To make PARTFILT.FLT fake a FAT32 partition the /P option should be /P 0B. To make PARTFILT.FLT fake a FAT32X partition the /P option should be /P 0C. To make PARTFILT.FLT fake a LINUX partition the /P option should be /P 83. Or you can use a comination of the types e.g. /P 0B,0C The best location in the config.sys seems to differ depening on your configuration. Some state FAT32.IFS will only work is PARTFILT is the first basedev, other claim it only works if PARTFILT is the last one. A specific problem was reported when using a SCSI powersave basedev that only seemed to work if PARTFILT was the last basedev. HOW OS/2 SCANS FOR PARTITIONS ============================= During the boot process of OS/2 partitions are scanned twice, each using the same algoritm to detect partitions and if OS/2 supports the partition types found drive letters are assigned to them. The first scan takes place during initial boot. (PARTFILT has no effect on this scan!) The main purpose of this scan seems to be to detect the OS/2 boot drive and to assign a drive letter to it. For OS/2 to be able to boot this drive letter may NOT change later on during the second scan. The second scan takes place while initializing the file system. Via calls to OS2DASD.DMD the partitions are scanned and drive letters are assigned. Only this second scan is influenced by PARTFILT. So whatever you do, you must make sure that in both scans the OS/2 boot drive gets the same drive letters assigned. If your FAT32 partition is not a primary partition and you don't care what drive letter the FAT32 partition gets you may stop reading here. Simply do not specify the /A or /M options and the FAT32 partition will get a drive letter higher then all partition normally recoqnized by OS/2. But if your FAT32 partition is a primary partition, or you want the FAT32 partition to have a drive letter before the OS/2 boot drive you will need to do some extra work. Just for the record the normal assignment order of OS/2 is: 1. (Current active) Primary partition on first HD 2. (Current active) Primary partition on second HD 3. and so on... 4. All extended partitions on first HD 5. All extended partitions on second HD 6. And so on... 7. Removeable drives Should you need to use the /M parameter with PARTFILT you should know the the sequence numbers used as arguments are different from the normal order OS/2 uses. Here's where DISKINFO comes along. DISKINFO shows the seq# as used by PARTFILT. See below. Now suppose you have the following scenario: C: is FAT16 (Primary) D: is HPFS (Extended) and you consider converting the FAT16 partition to FAT32 (with partition magic) the following will happen after the conversion: During the first scan the FAT32 partition is skipped and the OS/2 boot drive will get C: assigned. During the 2nd scan FAT32 is recoqnized because you have loaded PARTFILT and is assigned C:. Your HPFS partition will get D: assigned and OS/2 will not boot because OS/2 has already decided to go for C: but cannot find its stuff there. There are two solutions: - Reinstall OS/2 on the HPFS partition without PARTFILT installed. OS/2 will install everything on C: (HPFS). Later you could add PARTFILT and FAT32.IFS without the /A and /M options and the FAT32 partition will become D:. - Add a fake (preferrably HPFS) partition between the FAT32 and HPFS partition. During the 1st scan, this partition will get C: and your boot partition will get D:. Load PARTFILT with the /A and /M options, where in my example the mountlist should be: /M 0,2. Explanation: With the Fake partition installed the following partitions exist: 0 - FAT32 1 - fake HPFS 2 - HPFS (boot) By not specifying seq# 1 in the mountlist, PARTFILT will not virtualize this partition and OS/2 will not assign a drive to it. By using a HPFS partition, Windows 95 will not recoqnize the fake partition and will not assign a drive letter to it. ABOUT HIDDEN PARTITIONS ======================= PARTFILT can also be used to make hidden partitions visible to OS/2. Here the following mechanism is used: if /A is not used only the types specified after /P are virtualized. (The /A switch controls whether or not to virtualize all partitions.) PARTFILT always unhides the partitions it virtualizes. For the partition types PARTFILT virtualizes the following rules apply: Normal partition types (types 1, 4, 6, 7, but also 11, 14, 16 and 17) are reported to OS/2 with their actual -unhidden- partition type. Any other partition types specified after /P are reported as un-hidden IFS partitions. Any other partition types NOT specified after /P are reported as their actual -unhidden- type. Note that this will only happen if you use the /A argument. Keep in mind that if you specify /A you must also use the /M argument to tell PARTFILT which partitions you want to mount. DISKINFO.EXE ============ When run with no options, diskinfo will scan and show all partitions. The following options are available: /V - Verbose mode. Show more info on FAT32 partitions. /B - Show the boot sector of FAT32 partitions. Only if /V is only specified. /P - Allows you to specify a list of partition types that should also get a partition sequence number. See PARTFILT for more information. An example of the output of PARTFILT without any options: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are 2 disks === Scanning physical disk 1.=== 0:P 06 HUGE Strt:H: 1 C: 0 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 258 S: 63 -:PA 0A BOOTMANAGER Strt:H: 0 C: 524 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 524 S: 63 1:LB 06 HUGE Strt:H: 1 C: 259 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 387 S: 63 2:LB 07 IFS Strt:H: 1 C: 388 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 523 S: 63 === Scanning physical disk 2.=== -:L 0B FAT32 Strt:H: 1 C: 1 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 381 S: 63 -:L 0B FAT32 Strt:H: 1 C: 382 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 524 S: 63 і ііі і і ііі А Partition type (the number the specify after /P to get this і ііі partition type handled by PARTFILT) і ііАДД H = Hidden partition і іАДДД A = Active / B = Bootable via bootmanager і АДДДД P = Primary / L = Logical (extended) АДДДДДД Seq # to be used in the OPTIONAL /M argument for PARTFILT. 2 FAT32 partitions found! WARNING: /P not specified. Only 'normal' partitions are assigned a partition sequence number! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- An example of the output of PARTFILT with /P 0B as argument: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also including partition types 0B. There are 2 disks === Scanning physical disk 1.=== 0:P 06 HUGE Strt:H: 1 C: 0 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 258 S: 63 -:PA 0A BOOTMANAGER Strt:H: 0 C: 524 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 524 S: 63 1:LB 06 HUGE Strt:H: 1 C: 259 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 387 S: 63 2:LB 07 IFS Strt:H: 1 C: 388 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 523 S: 63 === Scanning physical disk 2.=== 3:L 0B FAT32 Strt:H: 1 C: 1 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 381 S: 63 4:L 0B FAT32 Strt:H: 1 C: 382 S: 1 End:H: 127 C: 524 S: 63 і ііі і і ііі А Partition type (the number the specify after /P to get this і ііі partition type handled by PARTFILT) і ііАДД H = Hidden partition і іАДДД A = Active / B = Bootable via bootmanager і АДДДД P = Primary / L = Logical (extended) АДДДДДД Seq # to be used in the OPTIONAL /M argument for PARTFILT. 2 FAT32 partitions found! -----------------------------------------------------------------------------