Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 16:38:34 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FAQ Section 2.15... Message-ID: <199701182338.QAA12798@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <Mutt.19970118225028.j@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Jan 18, 97 10:50:28 pm
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> DOS doesn't really have multiple layers, since they squeeze the > chained tables into a flat namespace. This is much different from the > dual-level slice/partition approach FreeBSD is using now. The DOS tools do not make this distinction, and imply a hierarchy. If you are a user of DOS tools, you will see a hierarchy. The post to which I was replying claimed that this was not true. > The entire > DOS view is still maintained (called "slice", also a flat namespace), > and the "partition" level is added below. You know as well as me that > the use of the term "partition" in BSD has enough of historic > precedent to warrant it. I think it also historically precedes the > term "partition" introduced by the fdisk table, but it doesn't matter. > > We decided to leave the term "partition" as it has been used in > 386BSD, FreeBSD 1 etc. However you're whining about this, there _is_ > a conflict of names, and you have to break with some historic > tradition on either end. My loudest complaint was that you should not > knowingly confuse other users (who are not that confident with the > terminology yet), just to prove your ego (or what else you try to > achieve). Our terminology is settled, and we won't change it for > Terry Lambert. I'm not suggesting changing the terminology. I was done with that when I argued against calling what DOS FDISK.EXE calls "partitions" BSD "slices". That was 1994. But the boot process of *DOS* was 2 of the 3 issues which the user needed to deal with to solve the problem. The cases were 1) BIOS can't load boot block over 1024 cylinders 2) BIOS can, but BIOS loads boot manager, and boot manager can't 3) OS specific boot block doesn't LBA, assuming problems 1 and 2 have already been addressed In other words, were are dealing *only* with BIOS-using code and the DOS Primary Partition Table. I'm not going to call it "the DOS Primary Slice Table" when I'm talking to a DOS user about using DOS tools to correct a problem probably caused by a DOS BIOS limitation. This discussion has served no purpose, other than affording you another opportunity to jump down my throat over a minor semantic issue not relevent to the original issue, yet again. Knock it off, please. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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