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Date:      Wed, 25 May 2011 11:37:03 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To:        Andriy Gapon <avg@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt@mac.com>, freebsd-geom@FreeBSD.org, "Andrey V. Elsukov" <bu7cher@yandex.ru>
Subject:   Re: [RFC] Remove requirement of alignment to track from MBR scheme
Message-ID:  <73D4228C-58DF-4A73-A562-34AA4BBF08C4@bsdimp.com>
In-Reply-To: <4DDD1C56.70706@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <4DDA2F0B.2040203@yandex.ru> <D75B2856-D9D8-4BA3-BC54-8258610CEA06@xcllnt.net> <9ED563AB-7B35-40F4-A33E-015317858401@bsdimp.com> <4DDB5375.6050004@FreeBSD.org> <D7C4124D-A690-4960-B141-594C7E2BE792@mac.com> <2FCA1E3C-E11C-46C9-A41B-E5DF4D8BA1FC@bsdimp.com> <9B250685-62F2-4AF7-BDCC-D176FA3C6FCD@mac.com> <4DDD1C56.70706@FreeBSD.org>

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On May 25, 2011, at 9:12 AM, Andriy Gapon wrote:

> on 24/05/2011 21:12 Marcel Moolenaar said the following:
>> With respect to the creation:
>>=20
>> Since out synthesized geometry is not necessarily the same
>> as other OSes, we could opt to synthesize a geometry that
>> has a track size (=3D sectors/track) that is a multiple of 8
>> (to play nice with 4K sectors), and/or take the stripe
>> size of the underlying GEOM into account. This fundamentally
>> doesn't change a thing for MBR, but has the side effect of
>> achieving some of the goals *and* automatically works for
>> EBR as well.
>>=20
>> Thus: rather than hack MBR and forgetting about EBR and other
>> schemes, maybe we only have to tweak the geometry synthesis
>> to give people what they want without going over board.=20
>=20
> I don't think that currently we do synthesize any geometry in kernel.

We do.  There's at least three cases I can think of.  For CAM da =
devices, we always synthesize something bogus.  For ata devices on pc98 =
machines, we create the right fake geometry when certain conditions =
require us to create a fake geometry.  CAM on pc98 machines also does =
this.

The disk drives themselves are creating fake geometry and passing it up.

> I think that we just whatever BIOS/firmware/etc provides to us in some =
way.

For MBR and devices > 8GB, this should be ignored, since the fields =
saturate (except ones created with our fdisk/sysinstall programs: then =
they just size & 0x3ff the values for cylinders rather than the proper =
1023 saturation).

>> After
>> 9.0 branched, we can do a lot more knowing we have plenty
>> of soak time...
>=20
> I agree in general, but there is one thing I want now/ASAP - ability =
to use gpart
> to create (valid) partitions the way I like it disregarding whatever =
fake geometry
> there might be.  I hate when tools go EDAVE on me.

At this stage of the game, the boundary checks should be relaxed and =
opt-in.  We likely should just create MBR slices starting at 64 always, =
unless someone has specifically requested that we align things, or asks =
for a different starting place.

Warner=



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