From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 2 22:27:54 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C32ED1065676 for ; Fri, 2 Oct 2009 22:27:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com) Received: from mail.r-bonomi.com (mail.r-bonomi.com [204.87.227.120]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99CB48FC13 for ; Fri, 2 Oct 2009 22:27:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: (from bonomi@localhost) by mail.r-bonomi.com (8.14.3/rdb1) id n92MHcgm018910 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:17:38 -0500 (CDT) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 17:17:38 -0500 (CDT) From: Robert Bonomi Message-Id: <200910022217.n92MHcgm018910@mail.r-bonomi.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: sysinstal and setting up the BSD partitions inside an FDISK 'slice'. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:27:54 -0000 The 'sysinstall' BSD partition-table and mount point editor appears to be lacking in some features that are highly desirable to people building complex configurations with the O/S spread across multiple drives. For the 'usual' scenarios -- especially with modern high-capacity drives -- the case can be made, fairly convincingly, for using only a small number of filesystems (i.e., possibly as few as 2) on a large drive. There are, however, specialized (i.e., at least 'somewhat' esoteric :) situations where it _is_ desirable to use a much larger number of filesystems. Situations were you need to control the allocation of partition letters, _and_ 'where' on the slice that partiton 'lives'. Just like being able to edit the 'mount point', without deleting/re-creating the partition, it would be _very_ helpful to have a function that allowed one to change _which_ partition a given chunk of disk was named. That is, cursor to '{controller}d1s2g', say, and be able to 'change' the final character to any of the partitions (abdefh) that are not currently allocated any space.