From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Sep 16 18:17: 4 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from Gloria.CAM.ORG (Gloria.CAM.ORG [205.151.116.34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFD7237B423; Sat, 16 Sep 2000 18:16:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (intmktg@localhost) by Gloria.CAM.ORG (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA09153; Sat, 16 Sep 2000 21:11:27 -0400 Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 21:11:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Marc Tardif To: "Aleksandr A.Babaylov" Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: device naming convention In-Reply-To: <200009162327.DAA17240@aaz.links.ru> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [ snip ] > > 1. What are wd0[a-h] used for? > For wd0sN[a-h] where N is number of first slice recognized > as FreeBSD slice > If I understand correctly, wd0[a-h] will be the same as wd0s3[a-h] in a situation where DOS is on first slice, Linux on second and FreeBSD on third, right? But what if the fourth slice is also FreeBSD? In such a case, I'll assume you meant "booted slice" instead of "first slice", where the slice selected when booting will be referred to by the OS as wd0[a-h] which would translate to "current slice". Confirmation of my assumption would be appreciated. > > 2. If wd0s1 is my first slice, why isn't it named wd0s0? > wd0s0 == wd0 > wd0s0a == wd0a > I somehow doubt that. Considering wd0s* goes from 1 to 4 inclusively, I would tend to believe the first slice is wd0s1. [ snip ] > > Assuming /dev/wd0s2 contains a few blocks, ie /dev/wd0s1 > > doesn't span to the end of disk: > > 4. If I want to use /dev/wd0s2 as a raw slice for reading > > and writing, what are the steps to follow? > You can't write several blocks near /dev/wd0s2 beginning. > Use /dev/wd0 with proper address > That is rather risky. Wouldn't it be safer to have a device name I could dedicate to some purpose. In such a case, I could chown the device to an appropriate username and group. Furthermore, I could avoid the unfortunate mistake of overwriting my current FreeBSD fs in case I get the addresses wrong. > > 4a. Do I need to format the partition as any type? If so > > is there a recommended type (perhaps one which won't > > be recognised by the bootloader would be preferable)? > It depends on usage. And remember - kernel looks up every > slice to find FreeBSD label - even if you mark it 0 (unused) > How does it depend on usage? Are some formats preferable for some specific usage (consider I'll only be using the raw interface to the device)? [ snip ] Thanks for the first message, Marc Tardif To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message