Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 22:53:53 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: opentrax@email.com Cc: jhb@FreeBSD.ORG, msmith@FreeBSD.ORG, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Dedicated disks (was: Dangerously Dedicated) Message-ID: <200011222253.PAA06600@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <200011221316.FAA00484@spammie.svbug.com> from "opentrax@email.com" at Nov 22, 2000 05:16:02 AM
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[ ... on the impending death of "Dangerously Dedicated" ... ] > > The only problem is that the issues _have_ been discussed in excruciating > > detail many times. I suggest you make use of the mail archives. > > Mr. Smith, if the issues have been hashed out as you say, the perhaps > a document can be pointed that outlines these issue clearly. > Your suggestion, while a fine one, has un-seen harm of people > associating (harsh) discussion on the matter, rather than seeing > the bluk of the matter. I've stated my opinion, that does not > lessen yours. Could I expect that you might be able outline > yours points in an enumerate list or bulletize format? For: o In "Dangerously Dedicated" mode, some laptops will SPAM your FreeBSD partition when told to "suspend to disk" o You can not easily add another OS to an existing system, without a full backup and restore o Commerical boot managers have problems with it; this is an issue when you have FreeBSD on one "Dangerously Dedicated" disk, and anohter OS on a second disk o Commercial partition manipulation tools can not move disk contents around opaquely; this would still be a problem for OSs which hard code their kernel location in their second stage boot (does NetBSD still do this?), but would not be a problem for FreeBSD. Example: the program "fips" can move Linux parititons around; the commercvial program "Partition Magic" from Power Quest supports Linux, but does not support FreeBSD (they go so far as to actually support EXT2FS manipulation). o An increasing number of BIOS will divide by 0 when they are attempting to implement LBA addressing. These systems simply _can not boot_, given FreeBSD's fake DOS partition table in its disklabel o The FreeBSD fake DOS partition table does not pass a number BIOS-based self-consistency checks (it needs to be fixed -- feel free to bell the cat), and so systems which use these checks in the BIOS to protect against boot sector virus infestation _can not boot_. Against: o Some fictitious geometries are fictionalized in the controller, and are opaque through one interface, but not another. The only way these can work is if the linear array of bytes starts at 0,0,0. Example: WD1007 ESDI controller, without jumper J2 set. These systems can be set up using non-default tools (in point of fact, I have _always_ had to use NetBSD's tools to setup these systems: FreeBSD's tools have _never_ worked for them, even in "Dangerously Dedicated" mode; after partitioning using NetBSD, FreeBSD can be isntalled normally). o Existing "Dangerously Dedicated" systems. This is really not an issue, since what is being removed is the ability to create them with the default tools, not the ability to boot from existing systems after an upgrade. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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