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Date:      Wed, 15 Feb 1995 03:31:40 +1100
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        Herve.Soulard@inria.fr, freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject:   Re: Disklabel
Message-ID:  <199502141631.DAA08302@godzilla.zeta.org.au>

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>At home I'm running FreeBSD-2.0. At work I'm working on DEC-Alphas
>with OSF1. I would like to use a hard disk to carry files between
>the two systems. 

>I know it is possible because I've done it, but I cannot do it again.
>Problems are with disk labels. When I disklabel the disk on FreeBSD,
>I cannot read it on OSF1, and vice versa. I've only tested the
>configuration where the full disk is used for FreeBSD/OSF1.  

Perhaps the label has been influenced by the DOS partition table even
though you used the full disk.

>PS: Could somebody explain me how labels, DOS partitions tables, etc
>    are written on the disk ? Or tell me where I could find something
>    that describe this. For FreeBSD of course.

The label is written to the second sector of the BSD DOSpartition
(if any).  Locating the label is surprisingly complicated because
the information in the label is sort of required to find the label.
The 'c' partition described in the label must match the BSD
partition described in the DOSpartition table.  The 'd' partition
is reserved for describing the whole disk.  Other systems probably
use an incompatible scheme.  FreeBSD-2.1 will support relative
labels.  Everything in the label will be relative to the containing
DOSpartition and the 'd' partition will no longer be special.  Other
systems certainly use an incompatible scheme.

Bruce



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