From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 16 12:40:53 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 70C8D37B401 for ; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:40:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rwcrmhc51.attbi.com (rwcrmhc51.attbi.com [204.127.198.38]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9406743E91 for ; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:40:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([12.242.158.67]) by rwcrmhc51.attbi.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP id <20021016194044.BCOE4193.rwcrmhc51.attbi.com@localhost.localdomain>; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 19:40:44 +0000 Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.6/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g9GJhaUW053328; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:43:37 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id g9GJhTEA053323; Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:43:29 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from swear@attbi.com) X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.localdomain: jojo set sender to swear@attbi.com using -f To: Jerry McAllister Cc: jmd17@columbia.edu, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: using an extended partition for freebsd References: <200210161434.g9GEYJe19859@clunix.cl.msu.edu> From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 16 Oct 2002 12:43:29 -0700 In-Reply-To: <200210161434.g9GEYJe19859@clunix.cl.msu.edu> Message-ID: Lines: 49 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > I am installing 4.7-REL on a PC with one PRIMARY and one EXTENDED partition. > > The PRIMARY > > partition is FAT and I have W98 there. I want to use the EXTENED partition > > (the WHOLE partition - > > there is currently nothing there) for FreeBSD but I read that FreeBSD needs > > to be installed into > > a PRIMARY partition. Under the IBM disk-layout scheme we're still using 20 years later, you may have up to 4 primary partitions. Most software supports having one of them being an extended partition which contains secondary partitions. So you have two primaries, one of them extended. (I suspect that one could manage to use multiple extended partitions with Linux, with some rarely-used "fdisk" features, but probably causing problems for some software.) > Right. An extended partition is something MS came up with to get around > some historical narrow thinking. FreeBSD doesn't need that. Be careful there. The BSD OSes essentially do the same thing, except they allow four "extended" partitions and use different internal formats and names: primary partition -> slice secondary partition -> partition I think we should use the IBM jargon. While the slice/partition jargon is a bit cleaner, the benefit is not worth the costs in continually needing to explain the differences in documents and support forums, and giving newbies another reason to return to what they know best. > It just needs slices (which are called partitions by Microsloth). Actually, it doesn't. FreeBSD can just have what it calls "partitions", in which case there won't be a "partition table". But "they" recommend having one slice anyway; I guess to support software (eg, on a Linux disk) thatexpects the more common disk layout. > > SYSINSTALL's FDISK program has an option ("Change Type") that lets me change > > the EXTENDED > > partition to FreeBSD, but I don't know if it is changing the partition to > > PRIMARY or just making a > > cosmetic Label change. And if it is making the change, will the BIOS > > recognize it (will anything > > break) I've never used it but it sounds like it would work OK. The BIOS doesn't need to recognize it, though with some boot loaders, it might need to have the "/" secondary partition in the first 1024 cylinders for your BIOS to grab all of the boot code. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message