Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 18:51:36 +1000 From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: bde@zeta.org.au, jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: alain@Wit401402.student.utwente.nl, current@freefall.FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Of slices and boot code.. Message-ID: <199508230851.SAA11758@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
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>What if a "slice" referred only to an MBR entry, e.g. one of the 4 >entries configured by the fdisk editor - sd0s1, sd0s2 and so on. >A "partition" always referred to a subsection of a slice (a slice of a >slice? gah!), that is something modified by the disklabel editor - >sd0s1a, sd0s2d and so on. >Note that this would hold true even for extended DOS partitions and >such - there would be no distinction drawn for "BSD partitions" and >any other subsectioning of a slice. Then you would have to call what is now sd0s5a a "BSD partition within a partition within a slice" and name it something like "sd0s4e1a" (where "s4" is the slice (an extended partition in DOS-speak), "e1" is the second partition within the slice (a logical drive in DOS-speak) and "a" is the first BSD partition within that first partition). Gak. FreeBSD may have to be put on sd0s4e1 because DOS is on sd0s1, Linux-root is on sd0s2, Linux-usr is on sd0s3, sd0s4 is an extended slice and Linux-swap is on sd0s4e0. >Once we get a working ext2fs we'll only have the situation complicated >even further as people want to deal with their "Linux slice" as a set >of "Linux partitions". Drawing a clear line now will only make our >lives easier then. Linux doesn't have its own partitions. It uses DOS partitions er slices. That's what I do for FreeBSD file systems when there are plenty of spare primary partitions: newfs /dev/rsd1s2. This currently requires putting a label on the slice. >I'm still not clear on whether or not those last patches of yours will >enable me to yank the "compatibility hacks" out of sysinstall. I >surely would like to as it would actually simplify the code >considerably! It would also simplify the kernel code considerably. Bruce
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