From owner-cvs-all Thu Feb 22 15:11:28 2001 Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from mobile.wemm.org (c1315225-a.plstn1.sfba.home.com [65.0.135.147]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94B5037B401; Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:11:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peter@netplex.com.au) Received: from netplex.com.au (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mobile.wemm.org (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f1MNBBf41756; Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:11:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peter@netplex.com.au) Message-Id: <200102222311.f1MNBBf41756@mobile.wemm.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.2 06/23/2000 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Jordan Hubbard , cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/release/sysinstall disks.c In-Reply-To: <20010222203042.C2043@elia.heep.sax.de> Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:11:11 -0800 From: Peter Wemm Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG J Wunsch wrote: > [sorry, replying to somewhat old mail, but i've now almost caught up > with my old commit mails...] > > As Jordan Hubbard wrote: > > > Well, last time we settled the issue, the consensus was that the > > feature should stop being "waved" at users (e.g. they should not be > > asked) but that an obscure key sequence be added for getting at > > dangerously dedicated mode. > > I second this, and it should somehow be visible in a menu of some > sort. > > Until the stupid fdisk misfeature has been completely removed from > Peecees where they store the slice starting location in two different > values (logical block # and CHS value for INT 0x13 call), the only > possible starting value that is consistent across all possible BIOS > translations is # 0, and that effectively means DD mode. So the > advantage of DD mode is that the disk is transferrable between BIOSes > using different translations. If only it were so. We stopped using DD mode at yahoo because we could not dd disk images from scsi <-> IDE and use scsi disks on different controllers (eg: ncr/sym <-> adaptec). Some combinations of BIOS and boot1 worked, but we had trouble in general. In the end, we just completely gave up and now use PXE to create non-DD disks. We were still seeing people posting regularly on the lists that had installed DD disks themselves using sysinstall and it caused their SCSI bios to lock up. > We are in general installing all > ``serious FreeBSD machines'' at work in DD mode, and i'm pretty sure > there are others as well. So we really need this option. > > (Needless to say, i hate that fdisk sh*t...) Bring on EFI! Pure LBA based! :-) Cheers, -Peter -- Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au "All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message