From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 22 15:47:25 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 968CC1DF for ; Wed, 22 Jan 2014 15:47:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: from wonkity.com (wonkity.com [67.158.26.137]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 487A61599 for ; Wed, 22 Jan 2014 15:47:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: from wonkity.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wonkity.com (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP id s0MFl9jY067479; Wed, 22 Jan 2014 08:47:09 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from localhost (wblock@localhost) by wonkity.com (8.14.7/8.14.7/Submit) with ESMTP id s0MFl9GX067476; Wed, 22 Jan 2014 08:47:09 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 08:47:09 -0700 (MST) From: Warren Block To: Olivier Nicole Subject: Re: Am I getting too old In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.4.3 (wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Wed, 22 Jan 2014 08:47:09 -0700 (MST) Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 15:47:25 -0000 On Wed, 22 Jan 2014, Olivier Nicole wrote: > in the old times (FreeBSD 8) it took me 5 minutes to partition a disk > for a test machine: create a couple of MS DOS partitions, install the > MBR, create FreeBSD partitions, done. It used to be working easily, > efficiently and reliably. > > Now it had been one day since I tried to reproduce that with FreeBSD > 9, not to avail: I always end up with messaged saying things like > invalid partition, or stuff like that. > > What was the rational behind the decision of breaking something that > used to work fine (that had been working fine for over 10 years) and > replace it with something that is ugly, unfriendly (you have to give > some types to the partitions, but nowhere is it written what type is > allowed or not) and that is not working? > > Oh maybe if I choose to go all by default it will work, but I don't > want the default, I want to be allowed to make my own choices easily. Is this about sysinstall versus bsdinstall? Or fdisk/bsdlabel versus gpart? sysinstall was fine for me, except when it unpredictably overwrote the MBR even after being told not to. sade was, well, the same thing. For disk partitioning, I find gpart much easier to use than sysinstall, sade, fdisk (FreeBSD, Linux, or MS-DOS), bsdlabel, or the partition editor in bsdinstall. Here are my notes on using gpart to set up GPT or MBR/BSDLabel: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html There is a separate version for SSDs which has all the steps on a quick summary which is also applicable to hard drives: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/ssd.html