From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Aug 30 14:53:12 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id OAA03700 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 30 Aug 1995 14:53:12 -0700 Received: from godzilla.zeta.org.au (godzilla.zeta.org.au [203.2.228.34]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id OAA03683 for ; Wed, 30 Aug 1995 14:52:47 -0700 Received: (from bde@localhost) by godzilla.zeta.org.au (8.6.9/8.6.9) id HAA23375; Thu, 31 Aug 1995 07:46:50 +1000 Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 07:46:50 +1000 From: Bruce Evans Message-Id: <199508302146.HAA23375@godzilla.zeta.org.au> To: bde@zeta.org.au, hackers@freebsd.org, jdl@chrome.onramp.net, rcarter@geli.com Subject: Re: /etc/disktab and stuff Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk >|Something like the following should work, but I'm less sure about it: >| >| disklabel /dev/rsd1 >/etc/label.sd1 # get sub-minimal label >| vi /etc/label.sd1 # fix deficiencies in label; >| # partition as required >| disklabel -R -r sd1 /etc/label.sd1 >| >Would this work with the ncr controller, which has trouble guessing >the right parameters with large drives? I can see an opportunity It doesn't depend on the controller or the drive (except for old ST506 and ESDI drive/controllers that don't report their geometry. >for a lot of experimenting on both the msdog/FreeBSD sides getting >an initial set of parameters that would work with fdisk. These are the BIOS geometry parameters. They aren't directly related to the drive or the controller. They are only used for booting, and then only if the bootstrap isn't on the first track as the BIOS sees it. The above method puts the bootstrap on the first track (if tracks have >= 16 sectors :-). The above method fails if the existing MBR is magic in some way, e.g., if it has Disk Manager on it. Bruce