Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 12:24:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MSDOS extended partitions and "slices" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.00.9808061222280.28098-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <199808021131.FAA12204@lariat.lariat.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Brett Glass wrote: > Just mounted a DOS/Windows hard disk on a system running FreeBSD 2.2.7, but > with some difficulty. Why? Because the scheme for assigning names and > numbers to the slices was very odd, and some of the needed nodes in /dev > just weren't there. > > The C: partition of the disk came out as wd1s1, which seems reasonable. But > D: didn't come out at wd1s2. Instead, it came out at wd1s5. (I couldn't > make 2-4 do anything). And successive logical drives came out at 6, 7, 8, > etc. While the error messages from the mount command showed that it > considered the partitions to be numbered as wd1s<n> (where n went up to > 12), they couldn't be mounted until I used /dev/MAKEDEV to create a device > node for each one. This is fully normal. Extended partitions get mapped to extra slice numbers since one extended partition can have multiple logical disks. wd1s2 is the extended partition itself, which isn't that useful. > I've got them all working and in FSTAB now, but it was quite the puzzle. > What is the rationale behind the numbering scheme? Are s1,s2,s3,and s4 the > primary partitions? Yes, either DOS Primary or other recognized filesystem type. > If so, shouldn't the logical drives really be s1a, s1b, s1c, etc.? Not necessarily. The lettered partitions have some special behaviors with `c' and `d' in particular, and it doesn't fit well with the BSD partitioning/slicing mechanism. > And, , is there an easy way to generate (or have the system generate) > the /dev nodes automatically? I might one day stick in a Jaz cartridge > with more partitions than before and need to read it in a hurry. You can pre-create them. if you want /dev-on-the-fly wait for DEVFS and SLICE to hit mainstream. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.00.9808061222280.28098-100000>