From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 9 11:50:18 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2DB65106566C for ; Mon, 9 Jul 2012 11:50:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bruce@cran.org.uk) Received: from muon.cran.org.uk (muon.cran.org.uk [IPv6:2a01:348:0:15:5d59:5c40:0:1]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ADDD98FC1D for ; Mon, 9 Jul 2012 11:50:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from muon.cran.org.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by muon.cran.org.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5ED7E6569; Mon, 9 Jul 2012 12:51:42 +0100 (BST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=cran.org.uk; h=message-id :date:from:mime-version:to:cc:subject:references:in-reply-to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; s=mail; bh=t1/5meqzlFou o0pIfU0rsp1tOYg=; b=k/czmBQjuHlqL6+hnFvymrVIbViiWmZY2P2+i3qm64d+ ox5VIn1XRkMYRHti38wPFwJhHeQ7wXg9HY//am/dlmt+p6KvOSnDaQ3H5O1kbM8p +shlszR2zCDj9qpDZkxdnIe3feQiecOyu2f9p3t/vivLb6A6VIIkTsssxoiZyOQ= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=cran.org.uk; h=message-id :date:from:mime-version:to:cc:subject:references:in-reply-to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; q=dns; s=mail; b=yZwpJK id5Rn48gDM2MwFkoDiwDhfbOLuJKlm1ReDvzxyU340MIbxg9sX5+YDcL6kYDOv+c CzxJno4LcR1F//O8qfB8cyW3M3c73fGZ86X3tSPYQjSWz5i2dbzs3A9wOJJRC9UF 1KV9f6mRYEqXNLJD2cgk7CYZ1Lwxgcsm+kFrw= Received: from [192.168.2.11] (unknown [93.89.81.205]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by muon.cran.org.uk (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id B71ACE6568; Mon, 9 Jul 2012 12:51:42 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <4FFAC578.4050003@cran.org.uk> Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:50:16 +0100 From: Bruce Cran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120614 Thunderbird/13.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Polytropon References: <47.B3.06836.B9F4AFF4@smtp02.insight.synacor.com> <20120709121608.1bce238e.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20120709121608.1bce238e.freebsd@edvax.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Carmel , Thomas Mueller , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:50:18 -0000 On 09/07/2012 11:16, Polytropon wrote: > If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains > a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call > it a slice (slice == "DOS primary partition"). In this case, > there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS > file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support > for partitioning. Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' mode, containing nothing except the filesystem. The way you'd mount it would be: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/point You can do the same with a normal USB or other disk using: newfs /dev/da0 mount /dev/da0 /mnt/point The reason it's called 'dangerously dedicated' I think is that other systems - or even the same system months/years later if you forget and run the wrong tools - won't know there's a filesystem there and it's easy to think the disk's empty. If you're on an old system and run 'gpart show da0' and don't see a partition table it's quite easy to forget to check if da0 itself contains a filesystem. When using GPT what were called slices are now partitions, and instead of 'ada0s1a' (disk 0, slice 1, partition a) you just have 'ada0p1'. A partition table supports up to 4096 entries (gpart creates one supporting 128 by default) so there's no need for the freebsd container any more - you just create freebsd-boot, freebsd-ufs, freebsd-zfs, freebsd-swap entries e.g. 'gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 64g da0'. -- Bruce Cran