[Info-vax] questions on initialize/gpt

[Dirk Munk]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2015-06-21, Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl> wrote:
>> Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>
>>> AIUI, (not actually having used IA-64 VMS) the GPT.SYS file is just
>>> a fake partition created by VMS $ init to allow the contents to be
>>> visible from the console.
>>>
>>> As such (since VMS doesn't support partitions) this means $ init has
>>> to do the whole thing and can't use any existing structures because
>>> it needs to create the fake partition once it knows where the space
>>> for the fake partition has been allocated within the ODS-2/ODS-5
>>> volume.
>>>
>>> The alternative would be for $ init to have code added to merge the
>>> existing partition into the newly allocated VMS ODS-2/ODS-5 structures
>>> during $ init. I imagine that's a lot more complicated than just
>>> creating a fake partition within the new ODS-2/ODS-5 volume.
>>>
>> OK, but for the boot disk there must be an EFI FAT32 partition
>> somewhere, how is that done? Is it a container file on an ODS disk?
>
> GPT.SYS _is_ the container AIUI.
>
> Simon.
>

Yes, but there can also be more partitions for EFI. I wonder if a 
partition manager program (like Gparted) can read GPT.SYS.