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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 14:26:22 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Gary Aitken <freebsd@dreamchaser.org>
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	(wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:26:22 -0600 (MDT)
Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: bsdlabel geometry params
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On Mon, 4 Jun 2012, Gary Aitken wrote:

> According the the handbook, one should do the following to set up a new disk:
>
> 1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 bs=1k count=1
> 2 fdisk -BI da1 #Initialize your new disk
> 3 bsdlabel -B -w da1s1 auto #Label it.
> 4 bsdlabel -e da1s1 # Edit the bsdlabel just created and add any partitions.
> 5 mkdir -p /1
> 6 newfs /dev/da1s1e # Repeat this for every partition you created.
> 7 mount /dev/da1s1e /1 # Mount the partition(s)
> 8 vi /etc/fstab # Add the appropriate entry/entries to your /etc/fstab.
>
> In step #4, bsdlabel gives you a label with zeros for fsize, bsize, bps/cpg
> Is it necessary to fill these in, or is there a way to get some reasonable defaults?
> "newfs -N" will give you numbers for bsize and fsize, but what about bps/cpg?
>
> What does the install process do for this step?  I don't remember ever having to deal with it.

What part of the Handbook?  I would suggest using gpart(8), it makes GPT 
partitions easy, and nasty old MBR partitions aren't any worse than with 
fdisk/bsdlabel.