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Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 18:51:36 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199508230851.SAA11758@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: bde@zeta.org.au, jkh@time.cdrom.com
Subject: Re: Of slices and boot code..
Cc: alain@Wit401402.student.utwente.nl, current@freefall.FreeBSD.org
Sender: current-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

>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