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Date:      Sun, 23 Jul 2000 16:44:56 +0200 (CEST)
From:      "Patrick M. Hausen" <hausen@punkt.de>
To:        mi@aldan.algebra.com (Mikhail Teterin)
Cc:        jhb@pike.osd.bsdi.com (John Baldwin), stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: No /boot/loader (dangerously dedicated)
Message-ID:  <200007231444.QAA94743@hugo10.ka.punkt.de>
In-Reply-To: <200007221638.MAA33488@aldan.algebra.com> from Mikhail Teterin at "Jul 22, 2000 12:37:30 pm"

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Hello all!

Mikhail Teterin wrote:

> John Baldwin once stated:
> 
> ="No, you  shouldn't." Some SCSI  controllers are _known_ to  go haywire
> =with  a dangerously  dedicated disk  since it  uses a  completely bogus
> =geometry.
> 
> Then those  need to be explicitly  listed and, better yet, identified at
> install time... This is, however, a one shot deal, but you'll be wasting
> those 5Mb forever.

Personally I don't mind 5 MB wasted space - our production machines
have one GB of swap _just_in_case_ some Godzilla email from hell
hits them or some kiddy tries to DOS our Apache or whatever ...

But ...

I explicitly installed _all_ production machines "dangerously dedicated"
_to_get_around_ geometry problems. So I could swap SCSI controllers
of different brands with different translations.
So I just wouldn't need to care if the disk was > 1GB or not.
Try what happens if you install a "proper" partition table with
an Adaptec controller and swap it for an NCR one - boom!
Try the same with a dedicated disk ...

Folks, gemoetries are for brain damaged PC operating systems.
All the box needs to boot is a proper MBR. BIOSes that
don't boot from a dedicated disk are _broken_.

I definitely would mind _reinstalling_ > 20 servers to upgrade
to 5.x eventually.
So please leave it as a "compatibility mode" or whatever, but don't
dump support for dedicated disks.

I'm really puzzled by this thread, because after years of running FreeBSD
I've come to the opinion that "dedicated" is how disks should be partitioned
under all circumstances ... I mean, where's the partition table on
my Sparc systems running Solaris? Who would care installing MS OSs
additionally to FreeBSD on a server providing 24x7 service?

Regards,
Patrick
-- 
--- WEB ISS GmbH - Scheffelstr. 17a - 76135 Karlsruhe - 0721/9109-0 ---
------ Patrick M. Hausen - Technical Director - hausen@punkt.de -------
"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
 technology.  Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."


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