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# Using Partitions

[[IRC]], #hurd, 2007-07-04.

    <azeem-uni> so, is there a way to use a Debian GNU/Hurd partition
      (/dev/hda6) with qemu directly?
    <tschwinge> Don't dare to do that, please.
    <tschwinge> It will lead to inconsistencies.
    <tschwinge> Because the Linux kernel thinks that it has complete control
      over the disk, or something.
    <tschwinge> In theory you could run something like ``-hda /dev/hda'',
      having GRUB installed on there to offer you to boot your Hurd system from
      hda6 and that will even work, but then don't get the idea to stop qemu,
      mount that partition on your Linux system and restart qemu.  That's where
      I got lots of inconsistencies then, afterwards.
    <azeem-uni> it's probably the same problem as having that partition
      mounted, suspending to disk, booting into it in the Hurd, and resume
      Linux
    <neal> right
    <tschwinge> That's a different problem.
    <tschwinge> Then the partitoon is still mounted.
    <neal> no, I think it is basically the same problem
    <tschwinge> The file system stuff is cached in the kernel.
    <neal> you have data that has not been written to disk yet
    <tschwinge> Right.
    <neal> and neither is prepared for the resource to be shared
    <tschwinge> In the azeem-uni scenarion the data is on the file system layer
      and in my scenarion it's some disk block caching inside the Linux kernel,
      I guess.
    <azeem-uni> anyway, do you guys think if I use -hda /dev/hda and tell Grub
      to boot off /dev/hda6, that the rest of hda should be fine, right?
    <azeem-uni> maybe adding -snapshot makes it totally safe
    <neal> azeem: Should be fine.
    <tschwinge> Yes.

The problem is actually that the linux block cache doesn't make any consistency
between /dev/hda and /dev/hda6, so if you give /dev/hda to qemu, qemu writings
won't be consistent with mounting /dev/hda6 in linux. You can give /dev/hda6
directly to qemu and it will be fine.