partition table: which one to trust

[cgl72]

Hi all.
I have an internal hard drive that has quite a few partitions on it, but recently I have had a numbering missmatch between the different partitioning tools.

This is what fdisk-l gives me:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2550    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            2551       14596    96759495    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5            2551        2932     3068383+   e  W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sda6            2933        5482    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7            8717        8857     1132551   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8            8858        9621     6136798+  83  Linux
/dev/sda9            9622        9684      506016   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda10           9685       14596    39455608+  83  Linux
/dev/sda11           6759        8716    15727603+  83  Linux
/dev/sda12  *        5483        6701     9791586   83  Linux
/dev/sda13           6702        6758      457821   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Now QTparted gives me a very different picture, different sizes and all. Lets take the example of the partition listed above as /dev/sda11, that is 15GB is size. I created this 30 minutes ago by inserting the kubuntu dsktop live CD and using QTparted to format it with the name home_kubu at /dev/sda9.
Well QTparted now calls it type: unknown and the name home_kubu has jumped to /dev/sda12!. This is really making me scared!

One other strange thing is that when I try to mount the above /dev/sda11 as an ext3, mount returns an error. But /dev/sda9 gets mounted without a problem.

Obviously fdisk-l is not reflecting the current status of the disk. How can I fix this?
Could it be that I need to ask QTparted to rewrite the partition table?

Thanks very much

Christian

kubuntu Dapper 6.06.1

[penguin.ch]

Re: partition table: which one to trust

O.k., first things first: At least from my experience, I strongly recommend not to change tools while partitioning one and the same harddisk, or else the results might be surprising ... Sticking to fdisk has the advantage that there is a quite good manual available on how to handle this tool.

Another "point of interest" might be the current content of your system's [tt/etc/]fstab, or, to be more specific, if this file's (relevant) entries do match the output from fdisk -l (and, of course, all relevant mountpoints are existent). Otherwise, mounting can get tricky ...

HTH
Bernd