From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Oct 17 11:38: 6 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5CC2037B401 for ; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:38:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sccrmhc02.attbi.com (sccrmhc02.attbi.com [204.127.202.62]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B11F443EAF for ; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:38:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([12.242.158.67]) by sccrmhc02.attbi.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP id <20021017183804.PWQK12986.sccrmhc02.attbi.com@localhost.localdomain>; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 18:38:04 +0000 Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.6/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g9HIeoUW074226; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:40:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id g9HIeh8Y074223; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:40:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.localdomain: jojo set sender to swear@attbi.com using -f To: Giorgos Keramidas Cc: Jerry McAllister , jmd17@columbia.edu, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: using an extended partition for freebsd References: <200210161434.g9GEYJe19859@clunix.cl.msu.edu> <20021017101055.GB14331@hades.hell.gr> From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 17 Oct 2002 11:40:43 -0700 In-Reply-To: <20021017101055.GB14331@hades.hell.gr> Message-ID: Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Someone slandered FreeBSD thusly: > > It just needs slices (which are called partitions by Microsloth). Giorgos Keramidas writes: > Some (broken in my opinion) BIOS implementations will refuse or fail > to boot from disks that do not have a "valid partition table". They > are simply broken, since it's not that hard to load the master boot > record of the first system disk in memory and run its code, but their > very existence makes disks with "valid" partition tables a necessity :-/ Are you sure? I suspect that they just need 0x55aa at the end of the MBR. Otherwise, their definition of "valid" is probably broken too, so that you still don't need actual slices. But you couldn't set it up without slices using just "sysinstall" in that case, I'll have to admit. I guess we should say that FreeBSD needs slices only when slices are needed. Many users will not need them, especially for non-boot disks, but their use doesn't cost much and eliminates the risk of running into software which requires their presence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message