Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 21:54:57 -0700 (MST) From: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net> To: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> Cc: Brandon Fosdick <bfoz@glue.umd.edu>, Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca>, stable@FreeBSD.ORG, Roelof Osinga <roelof@eboa.com> Subject: Re: Dangerously Dedicated Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011222137580.1193-100000@vespa.orem.iserver.com> In-Reply-To: <200011192210.eAJMAWG03651@billy-club.village.org>
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On Sun, 19 Nov 2000, Warner Losh wrote: > spec. FreeBSD is lying to the BIOS with the MBR that we put onto the > disk, and that causes problems. > Of course, the mbr can be fixed with a quick application of fdisk. The problem boils down to wether an fdisk partition is allowd to contain the sector that has the MBR in it. You can have 'not quite as dangerously' (my words, no this isn't a third way to install) dedicated mode by putting boot1 on the disk and fixing the partition table on it to be correct. Theoretically, you still might find a pc-bios that is trying to be smart and demonstrates it's failings by getting confused over the mbr being included in an fdisk partition. Other than that, there really isn't much difference, from a bios point of view between dedicated-with-fixed-fdisk table and 'regular' installs... As an aside, I think that there is probably still a strong desire on many people's part to have dedicated installs. Most of them are only to serve some notion of what is 'neat' or 'correct' or 'proper'. This is enough reason, in my mind, to not go out of the way to make it not work, as seems to be the sentiment lately. If some new development were to significantly increase functionality, at the expense of hosing dedicated installs, then it might be worth getting rid of dedicated installs. But, if it's just to cut down on the number of questions about it, I wouldn't think it justified. Now that there exist tools to easily automate installs in non-dedicated mode, we'll be switching our systems over to non-dedicated mode... The lack of these tools has been the hitch for more than just me, judging by the email I've recieved about it... So, perhaps somthing in the handbook after where says 'dangeroulsy dedicated' isn't the way to go unless you know you need it.... that reads 'use fdisk -foo and then disklabel -bar' to get a proper install that will work with most any hardware.... without having to do it interactively in sysinstall (yes, I know that you can script sysinstall). At any rate, this has been discussed A LOT recently. Any speculation on why it has come up so much recently compared to the not-to-distant past? 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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