From owner-freebsd-newbies Thu Oct 4 0: 6:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from ocis.ocis.net (ocis.ocis.net [209.52.173.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3CC7337B401 for ; Thu, 4 Oct 2001 00:06:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from darkside (dial-178.ocis.net [209.52.175.168]) by ocis.ocis.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA19959; Thu, 4 Oct 2001 00:06:33 -0700 From: "Freddie Cash" To: James Zuelow , Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 23:56:35 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: long device names Reply-To: fcash@bigfoot.com Message-ID: <3BBBA5B3.31014.6578BBF@localhost> In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v4.0, beta 40) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > I have a heterogenous home network - Windows/RedHat/Debian/OpenBSD and > now FreeBSD, 4.4 installed yesterday. (Note that I've only been > running *nix for about a year, so I am definately not an expert.) > > While I wait for Annelise's book to arrive, I've been poking around > the FreeBSD box and immediately got hit with the long device names. > The Linux device names are all short - for example sdb4 - and make > sense to me. OpenBSD rearrages things - for example sd1d - but it > still makes sense. > What in the world is an ad0s1a? I get the ad0 part (first IDE drive), > but why s1a instead of just a-z? ad = atapi/ata disk 0 = first disk s = slice 1 = first slice a = first partition Basically, harddrives are labelled . The "extra" slice data is in there due to the way FreeBSD does it's partitioning (which, IMO, is one of the best systems I've come across yet). I have a great post on this that I sent to the local LUG. It's on my work comp so I'll send it along in the morn. > I'm not asking about how to read df -h or mount partitions, but rather > the why the partitions are named like this. Man device didn't help > much. It sure does make mounting a cd that much slower (two extra > characters to type > - gotta be a quarter second at least!) I don't see how typing "mount /cdrom" in FreeBSD takes more typing than "mount /mnt/cdrom" in Linux. :) I find that it actually saves 4 keystrokes. :) Cheers, Freddie fcash@bigfoot.com Linux is for people who hate Windows. FreeBSD is for people that like UNIX. -- unknown To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message