Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:59:59 +0200 From: Ed Schouten <ed@fxq.nl> To: FreeBSD GEOM <freebsd-geom@freebsd.org> Cc: Rink Springer <rink@freebsd.org>, Laurens Timmermans <laurens@timkapel.nl> Subject: New GEOM module: geom_xboxhd Message-ID: <20070414115959.GN81821@hoeg.nl>
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--nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, One of the problems of the current FreeBSD/xbox port is that it's not possible to install FreeBSD, while leaving the existing software alone. The Microsoft Xbox uses a custom disk layout which doesn't have a partition table format which specifies the geometries. All partitions are hardcoded. The last partition on the Xbox always has a variable size, because not all harddisks have the same size. The partition will never be bigger than 4895MB, so on Xboxes with a bigger harddisk, the Xbox software won't touch everything after 7645MB, which gives us space to install FreeBSD ;-) Linux has an evil hack to work around this; they have modified the x86 partition table code to start at 7645MB and create some device nodes (hda51 to hda55) which represent the partitions from the Xbox itself. I just wrote a GEOM module that just generates ad0s1 to ad0s5 and when the disk is big enough an ad0s6. My Xbox isn't capable anymore to deal with original Xbox harddisks anymore, so I tested it on my desktop with a snapshot of an Xbox harddisk from a friend of mine (thanks Laurens!). I've placed the code in a Git repository, which can be viewed online: http://g-rave.nl/gitweb?p=3Dgeom_xboxhd;a=3Dtree Yours, --=20 Ed Schouten <ed@fxq.nl> WWW: http://g-rave.nl/ --nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFGIMI/52SDGA2eCwURAjceAJ9wggcqR6MTjHIjlcq/N8dWX8DNIwCZAY9q C3UOwH3VKHADzoJDnn4cMro= =q5OB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp--
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