From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Feb 20 16:15:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A6AA11A5E for ; Sat, 20 Feb 1999 16:15:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id KAA04400; Sun, 21 Feb 1999 10:45:40 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id KAA24255; Sun, 21 Feb 1999 10:45:40 +1030 (CST) Message-ID: <19990221104540.V93492@lemis.com> Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 10:45:40 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Kenneth Chiu , Greg Black Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: BSD filesystems & MBR References: <19990220010713.3722.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: ; from Kenneth Chiu on Sat, Feb 20, 1999 at 02:53:06PM -0500 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Saturday, 20 February 1999 at 14:53:06 -0500, Kenneth Chiu wrote: > On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Greg Black wrote: >>> Optionally, but not recommended, you can make the disk "dangerously >>> dedicated". >> >> I keep seeing references that repeat this advice, but I have not >> seen any compelling reasons for it. Is there any real reason >> why, on a machine that will never run anything but FreeBSD, this >> could present a problem? > > The only "real" reason that I know of is the one that came across > the lists recently. As I understand it, the BIOS on a particular > machine gets confused by the absence of a "normal" partition table, > causing it to pass bogus data to the boot blocks. Correct, I've heard this too. I've seen a lot of discussion on the subject, and I'm no wiser. Some claim that dangerously dedicated disks don't work at all with modern BIOSes; others make a distinction between safely dedicated and dangerously dedicated. All don't supply enough information to convince me, but I haven't had time to look at it myself. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message