Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:47:26 -0400
From:      Lucas Holt <luke@foolishgames.com>
To:        Thomas Mueller <mueller6727@bellsouth.net>
Cc:        "freebsd-current@freebsd.org" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: 9.0 beta2 & the new bsdinstaller
Message-ID:  <FBC78CBB-359D-40B4-B7E7-04C56486710A@foolishgames.com>
In-Reply-To: <20110921082649.9616D1065672@hub.freebsd.org>
References:  <20110920210906.GG14862@over-yonder.net> <20110921082649.9616D1065672@hub.freebsd.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
1MB is a magic number. It works with advanced format disks, traditional disk=
s, some odd SSD and most raid configurations.=20

Lucas Holt

On Sep 21, 2011, at 4:26 AM, "Thomas Mueller" <mueller6727@bellsouth.net> wr=
ote:

>> =46rom "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net>:
>=20
>> I've been meaning to mention this, but we really should document
>> somewhere that it has a _MAXIMUM_ size.
>=20
>> I setup a system a few weeks back with GPT, and figured I'd just make
>> the first 'real' partition start at the 1 meg mark.  And make
>> everything before that (1 meg - the however many sectors for the pmbr)
>> the freebsd-boot partition.
>=20
>> It worked fine, up 'till the point that I tried to boot, and it
>> completely failed to, complaining that the boot code was too big.  I
>> had to track around in pmbr to find
>=20
>> .   .   cmp $0x9000,%ax..   .   # Don't load past 0x90000,
>> .   .   jae err_big..   .   #  545k should be enough for
>> .   .   mov %ax,%es..   .   #  any boot code. :)
>=20
>> and redo the partition to 512k (leaving a few hundred k unused before
>> the next partition started) before it would boot.  That's a little
>> nerve-wracking to hit on a critical system...
>=20
> I don't think there is any particular advantage in aligning GPT partitions=
 on 1 MB boundaries.
>=20
> Nothing sacred about being an integer power of 2, wouldn't it be sufficien=
t for boot partition size to be divisible by 4096 bytes, when the hard drive=
 sector size is 4096 bytes?
>=20
>=20
> Tom
>=20
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"=




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?FBC78CBB-359D-40B4-B7E7-04C56486710A>