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Date:      Sun, 27 Mar 2016 10:12:33 -0500
From:      Brandon J. Wandersee <brandon.wandersee@gmail.com>
To:        Teng Zhang <zhangteng331@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: bootable freebsd slice's limit
Message-ID:  <86h9fsnee6.fsf@WorkBox.Home>
In-Reply-To: <CAAb0nh1S%2BEQboRWSu6moqhuWJnwosCQ3ozvFYs7_D2M6mi8dAw@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAAb0nh0=_tFUoYfULp2j%2B6gXD1g91yciaaODPqmd4XV6sshffQ@mail.gmail.com> <CAAb0nh3H4GMMEqM9uZMwf_Xqi=rP58H8nA4ef5wSnCO3L7CA2g@mail.gmail.com> <CAAb0nh1S%2BEQboRWSu6moqhuWJnwosCQ3ozvFYs7_D2M6mi8dAw@mail.gmail.com>

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Teng Zhang writes:

> In man fdisk(8), it refers to
> "Note that bootable FreeBSD slices (the ``*/*'' file system) must lie
> completely within the first 1024 cylinders; if this is not true, booting
> may fail."
>        my confusion is whether this limit is aimed at  just i386 platform
> or all platforms that freebsd supports. Could you please tell me the actual
> condition ?

Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the
limitation is related to machine architecture. Rather, it has to do with
how the legacy bootloader handles older disks with a 512k sector size
and an MBR partition table.

I would guess that you are asking out of concern for on-disk filesystem
alignment? Is there any particular reason you cannot use GPT via
gpart(8), rather than MBR via fdisk(8)?

-- 

::  Brandon J. Wandersee
::  brandon.wandersee@gmail.com
::  --------------------------------------------------
::  'The best design is as little design as possible.'
::  --- Dieter Rams ----------------------------------



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