From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Aug 8 09:20:08 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: 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 1B88516A41F for ; Mon, 8 Aug 2005 09:20:08 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from svein-freebsd-questions@theloosingend.net) Received: from signal.itea.ntnu.no (signal.itea.ntnu.no [129.241.190.231]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 96CB743D45 for ; Mon, 8 Aug 2005 09:20:07 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from svein-freebsd-questions@theloosingend.net) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by signal.itea.ntnu.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id 978B035322 for ; Sun, 7 Aug 2005 20:52:16 +0200 (CEST) Received: from maren.thelosingend.net (maren.math.ntnu.no [129.241.211.48]) by signal.itea.ntnu.no (Postfix) with SMTP for ; Sun, 7 Aug 2005 20:52:16 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 46961 invoked by uid 1001); 7 Aug 2005 20:52:15 +0200 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 7 Aug 2005 20:52:15 +0200 Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 20:52:15 +0200 (CEST) From: Svein Halvor Halvorsen X-X-Sender: sveinhal@maren.thelosingend.net To: Nikolas Britton In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050807202720.T46397@maren.thelosingend.net> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Content-Scanned: with sophos and spamassassin at mailgw.ntnu.no. Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Using a hard drive without partitions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:20:08 -0000 * Nikolas Britton [2005-07-30 03:26 -0500] > What are the ramifications, good or bad, of not using partitions on a > FreeBSD disk?.... What is wrong with just a slice? In FreeBSD, you can newfs a disk (eg. ad0), a slice (eg. ad0s1) or a partition (eg. ad0s1a). Even a regular file could be newfs-ed! You can also bsdlabel either a disk or a slice or a regular file, and this way you can create a /dev/ad0a device. Also fdisk can handle regular files, so you can slice a file. Even though this last example would make much sense, the former do! I have newfs-ed the c-partition myself several times, and also skipped the bsdlabel-ing completely and just newfs'ed the entire slice. On dvd+rw, I've newfs-ed the media, without slicing or partitioning/labeling first. I haven't tried to bsdlabel a disk, though. I guess the problem with using such setups would be non-standardization. That is, other systems might not know how to interact with your particular setup. Otherwise it should be fine. It's not much use either, though, to skip to partitioning; you don't save much space by doing so. Svein Halvor