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Date:      Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:48:56 +0000
From:      Arthur Chance <freebsd@qeng-ho.org>
To:        "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Advanced Format Drive ?
Message-ID:  <50A4F2C8.5040308@qeng-ho.org>
In-Reply-To: <21828.1352983292@tristatelogic.com>
References:  <21828.1352983292@tristatelogic.com>

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On 11/15/12 12:41, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>
> In message <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211142250370.58597@wonkity.com>,
> Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 14 Nov 2012, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>>
>>> I'm looking at the examples section of the gpart(8) man page.  May I
>>> assume that if I just want to merely ``try out'' GPT... you know...
>>> taking it out on the road for a first time test run... that I can
>>> just do the first five (5) commands listed under EXAMPLES and then
>>> that will be enough to go ahead and try installing FreeBSD into the
>>> created freebsd-ufs partition?
>>>
>>> Even assuming that the answer is yes, I have still more questions...
>>> Where are these magic numbers coming from??  I am specifically talking
>>> about the number "34" in the "-b 34" option and also the number "162"
>>> in the "-b 162" option.  Tha man page just tosses those into the example
>>> command lines without saying a word about them.  And you can probably
>>> guess what it is that is especially troubling to me about them... neither
>>> one of them is divisible by 8 (i.e. 4KB/512B).  So would the examples
>>> in the current gpart(8) man page produce an Epic Fail when and if they
>>> were used with a modern "Advanced Format" drive?
>>
>> -b is the beginning block of a partition.  34 is a magic value, the size
>> of a standard GPT partition table.
>
> It probably wouldn't have hurt anything to mention that in the gpart man
> page.
>
> And what about 162?  Is that magic too?  If so, how?  I seriously do not
> know.

The man example should be taken as a whole. You've got

/sbin/gpart add -b 34 -s 128 -t freebsd-boot ad0

which gives you a 128 block partition starting at block 34, so the next 
free block is 162, and the next partition is explicitly started there in

/sbin/gpart add -b 162 -s 1048576 -t freebsd-ufs ad0

No magic, just arithmetic. :-)



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