From owner-freebsd-current  Wed Aug 23 03:37:18 1995
Return-Path: current-owner
Received: (from majordom@localhost)
          by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id DAB27649
          for current-outgoing; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 03:37:18 -0700
Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [192.216.222.226])
          by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id DAA27643
          for <current@freefall.FreeBSD.org>; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 03:37:15 -0700
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) with SMTP id DAA04712; Wed, 23 Aug 1995 03:35:25 -0700
To: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
cc: alain@Wit401402.student.utwente.nl, current@freefall.FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Of slices and boot code.. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 23 Aug 1995 18:51:36 +1000."
             <199508230851.SAA11758@godzilla.zeta.org.au> 
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 03:35:24 -0700
Message-ID: <4710.809174124@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: current-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> 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.

Well, you must admit that this example is a little contrived and if
such insane nesting were required because the user was trying to
shoe-horn FreeBSD into a system already so dedicated to DOS and Linux,
well, then so be it.  I'm trying to keep the most common scenarios as
simple and clean as possible and, truth be told, if someone REALLY
wanted to install FreeBSD in such a convoluted environment then I'd
say that the naming would be the least of their worries!

More to the point, I have yet to get a single tech-support query from
someone with all 4 MBR slots filled.  It just doesn't seem to happen
that way.  I think that my proposal still has merit.

> 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.

Hmm.  Well, I wasn't exactly suggesting that FreeBSD filesystems had
to ONLY go into a partition - I can see putting one straight into a
slice, as you suggest, but I still think that it should be called a
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.

So.  Um.  You're saying that this is planned/done/on the way?  I'm
still a little unclear on that.. :-)

					Jordan