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Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 18:47:00 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: freebsd@johnea.net
Subject: Re: 9.1 and gmirror with GPT?
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On Tue, 23 Oct 2012, freebsd@johnea.net wrote:

> In recent years I've just been creating a swap partition and one big root partition. It just seems as soon as I make all the traditional partitions, one runs out of room.
>
> Do you feel there are any major disadvantages of this approach?

Backup of split filesystems can be easier.  The traditional 
split-filesystem approach kind of separates things by use, and some 
people create a separate /home also.  The advantage of one big root is 
efficient use of free space on small drives.

> To create a swap and then a root that fills the rest of the disk, must the swap be created first, like this:
>
> gpart add -t freebsd-swap -a 4k -s 4g mirror/gm0s1
> gpart add -t freebsd-ufs  -a 4k       mirror/gm0s1
>
> Is there any other way to tell gpart to create the / partition using all space except 4G?

I'm afraid it requires one to Use Math(tm).  gpart show will at least 
show the real capacity of a drive, instead of the diagonally-measured 
inflated units used by drive vendors.