From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Dec 8 16:57:48 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from services.webwarrior.net (overlord-host99.dsl.visi.com [209.98.86.99]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D7C1E37B422 for ; Sat, 8 Dec 2001 16:57:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from twincat.vladsempire.net (hutch-814.hutchtel.net [206.10.71.142]) by services.webwarrior.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10CE9A0 for ; Sat, 8 Dec 2001 18:57:37 -0600 (CST) Received: by twincat.vladsempire.net (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 702313861; Sat, 8 Dec 2001 18:57:31 +0000 (GMT) Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 18:57:31 +0000 From: Josh Paetzel To: Erik Moe Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Purpose of /dev/cd0a and /dev/cd0c? Message-ID: <20011208185731.B398@twincat.vladsempire.net> Mail-Followup-To: Erik Moe , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG References: <3C129A33.6AB98D8B@mmcable.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3C129A33.6AB98D8B@mmcable.com>; from emoe@mmcable.com on Sat, Dec 08, 2001 at 04:54:43PM -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Dec 08, 2001 at 04:54:43PM -0600, Erik Moe wrote: > What is the significance of the two devices /dev/cd0a and /dev/cd0c, or > /dev/acd0a and /dev/acd0c for that matter? This is not explained in the > man pages or the handbook. Why would you use one and not the other? > > Thanks, > Erik Well, historically the c partition is used to refer to the entire disk. That would be the technically correct nomenclature to use. I didn't do too much digging, but I imagine the a partition exists as mount tries to make the cdrom look as much like a normal filesystem as possible. I believe it goes so far as to emulate a disklabel for it, which is why the a partition exists. Of course, in the case of a cdrom there's no difference. (although I suppose you could do some jUjU and create a cd with multiple partitions) Josh To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message