From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat May 1 18:56:13 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4DC33106566C for ; Sat, 1 May 2010 18:56:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cjk32@cam.ac.uk) Received: from ppsw-52.csi.cam.ac.uk (ppsw-52.csi.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.152]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14E528FC13 for ; Sat, 1 May 2010 18:56:13 +0000 (UTC) X-Cam-AntiVirus: no malware found X-Cam-SpamDetails: not scanned X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ Received: from nat0.cjkey.org.uk ([88.97.163.219]:4995 helo=[192.168.2.59]) by ppsw-52.csi.cam.ac.uk (smtp.hermes.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.157]:465) with esmtpsa (PLAIN:cjk32) (TLSv1:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:256) id 1O8HrI-0007wC-Gr (Exim 4.70) (return-path ); Sat, 01 May 2010 19:56:12 +0100 Message-ID: <4BDC794B.2060009@cam.ac.uk> Date: Sat, 01 May 2010 19:56:11 +0100 From: Christopher Key User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (Windows/20100228) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jon Theil Nielsen , User Questions References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: Re: More than 8 partitions 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: Sat, 01 May 2010 18:56:13 -0000 Jon Theil Nielsen wrote: > Hi > > I'm running 8.0-Release on an external usb hard drive. and have dual-boot > with FreeBSD on da0s2 and Windows XP on da0s1. I made a setup via Sysinstall > with 7 partitions: > > /dev/da0s2a on / (ufs, local) > /dev/da0s2b (swap) > /dev/da0s2d on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates) > /dev/da0s2e on /tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates) > /dev/da0s2f on /usr (ufs, local, soft-updates) > /dev/da0s2h on /var/log (ufs, local, soft-updates) > /dev/da0s2g on /home (ufs, local, soft-updates) > > I have about 660 GB left unused on da0s2 that I would like to use for > backups. But I can't figure out how to create one more partition. > If i create a file for bsdlabel like > > # size offset fstype > i: * 0 4.2BSD > > I get the following error message: "line 2: partition name out of range a-h: > i" > I have also tried with gpart: > > gpart add -s 500G -t freebsd -f x da0s2 > > I get something like "gpart: index '9': No space left on device" > > I thought that 8.0 should support more than 8 partitions. Maybe it does, but > then I don't know how to do. > Any ideas? > > I believe that FreeBSD does support more than 8 partitions on a disk (apparently up to 20 using gpart), but that you need sufficient entries for these partitions to be created in the disklabel, viz. gpart create -n 20 ... Some testing seems to indicate that you can manually override this by changing by byte 0x28a of the disk from 0x08 to 0x14, and that bsdlabel / gpart will then allow you to create further partitions on the disk. Kind regards, Christopher Key