From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 10 14:54:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3BF5A16A4DA for ; Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:54:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (clunix.cl.msu.edu [35.9.2.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C295A43D53 for ; Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.13.6+Sun/8.13.6) with ESMTP id k6AEs4v7028177; Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:54:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from jerrymc@localhost) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.13.6+Sun/8.13.6/Submit) id k6AEs428028176; Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:54:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Jerry McAllister Message-Id: <200607101454.k6AEs428028176@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: rs@pswl.com Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:54:04 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <1186771768.20060710132405@pswl.com> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL7] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "Mounting a drive" 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, 10 Jul 2006 14:54:06 -0000 > > Hallo > Could someone explain exactly what is meant by "mounting" a disk. I > understand that it is making a disk available for use, but would like > to understand the implications of the term and what abilities it > confers. Mounting connects the mount point to the device driver. After the mount, references to the mount point, cause it to talk to the device driver. > Part of the purpose of the question is that I am trying to find out > how I can have more partitions and detachable drives than there are > letters in the alphabet. I don't know what you mean by detachable drives - do you mean removable, hot-swap, unmount-able, whatever? Any drive - except root can be unmounted. You can mount only the filesystems you want to use at the time, regardless of how many physical drives are connected to the box. On each disk device whether single drive or raid, you are allowed up to 4 slices (1-4) and within each slice, 8 partitions (a-h). But, partition c is generally reserved. A partition is turned in to a filesystem with the newfs(8) utility. You can have as many drives as your controllers can talk to. Every filesystem refers to a single partition. A partition/filesystem is unseen by the system except for some utilities that talk to devices directly such as fsck(8) or dd(1) unless it is mounted. ////jerry > > Best Regards, > Richard Shoebridge > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"