Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 10:24:28 -0700 (MST) From: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net> To: opentrax@email.com Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Dedicated disks (was: Dangerously Dedicated) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011231005050.1914-100000@vespa.orem.iserver.com> In-Reply-To: <200011231608.IAA02277@spammie.svbug.com>
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The url provided doesn't exist, and perhaps this doesn't need to be included in any eventual comments, but some of the problems mentioned are basically due to active opposition to any support for dedicated mode. Replacing the 'bogus' boot1 partition table with valid values (keeping in mind that including the mbr in an fdisk slice _may_ still be bogus) that just include your whole disk and have reasonable values for gemoetry as calculated will remove a lot of the problems people typically discuss > > your FreeBSD partition when told to "suspend to disk" Of course the documentition, or techsupport or the manufacturer will tell you that you have to have a magic file on a fat32 filesystem somewhere. This isn't so much a problem with dedicateds as it is with not knowing the hardware you are running on. If a machine supports suspend to disk, you _will_ have to somehow reserve space for it to suspend into. Yes, a traditional 'dedicated' install will not work here, but only because it shouldn't. A non-dedicated install with only one partition entry will fail in the same ways... You could use the boot1 loader in the mbr, and define two partitions, one for your suspend, and the rest a valid fdisk table. All a dedicated install is in my mind is wether you have boot0 or boot1 in the mbr. In either case, though the documentation doesn't discuss this, you should be putting a valid fdisk table on and all of the dedicated problems I've ever seen (not relating to interoperating with other oses) go away. > > > > o You can not easily add another OS to an existing system, > > without a full backup and restore hence it is called DEDICATED mode -- ie I dont want some other os. > > > > o An increasing number of BIOS will divide by 0 when they > > are attempting to implement LBA addressing. These > > systems simply _can not boot_, given FreeBSD's fake DOS > > partition table in its disklabel again, 30 seconds in fdisk fixes this > > o The FreeBSD fake DOS partition table does not pass a > > number BIOS-based self-consistency checks (it needs to > > be fixed -- feel free to bell the cat), and so systems > > which use these checks in the BIOS to protect against > > boot sector virus infestation _can not boot_. again, 30 seconds in fdisk fixes this Several other things were mentioned that relate to dedicateds not playing well with other operating systems and utilities. The response to all of these is "Yes, but by definition, a 'dedicated' install is not required to interoperate with other systems since it is the only OS on the disk. (yes, multiple disks, a boot manager, etc but when I think dedicated, I dont think dual boot to two disks -- I think -- this is my FreeBSD web/file/print/etc server, and so why would I want to dual-boot? Fred -- Fred Clift - fclift@verio.net -- Remember: If brute force doesn't work, you're just not using enough. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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