Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 01:54:49 -0500 From: Bryan Batten <BryanBatten@compuserve.com> To: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com> Cc: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, Questions for FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: Using Extended Partitions Message-ID: <199712170155_MC2-2C40-F7F8@compuserve.com>
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I've perused the latest mail from you and Bruce of Mon 15 Dec 1997, and re-read the relevant sections of the FAQ (6.8) and Handbook (2.4) regarding the use of logical partitions within an extended partition - i.e. secondary partitions. And it now looks to me like the only way those statements can be understood as true is if there are DOS file systems on those partitions such that - if one were running DOS - they would be seen as D:, E:, F:, and so on. This seems to mean - to me, anyway, that one is restricted to DOS partitions only on secondary partitions. With respect to Bruce's suggested hacks: Since it looks like secondary partitions can be mounted - even if only as DOS file systems - it would appear that the mount logic is able to locate secondary partitions correctly. So temporarily faking out the FreeBSD fdisk (and presumably disklabel) may work. However, by now I have quite a bit of other stuff on my disks, so I'll have to mull it over for a while with respect to risks. Julian Elischer wrote: > I'm having a go at rewriting this stuff but its's not finished.. > do you have any base-partitions that you can swap to extended to give a > free base partition? Yes, I do. They're on a 2.1G third EIDE drive that I bought just for that purpose. Its too big for my BIOS to autotype correctly. (I built my system - a Pentium 90 - three years ago.) And while that doesn't seem to faze Linux, FreeBSD keeps insisting that it is not configured. I've made sure that wdc1 node and wdcs1 thru whatever .... etc, et al exist to no avail. Anyway that's a separate problem I've been pursuing under the thread of "Detecting 3rd EIDE Drive". Anyway, back to the matter in hand: (But I still don't understand why BSD should care anything about what a BIOS can or cannot do.) I now feel I've gathered enough expertise so that whenever I do fall off the wall I have enough of the King's horses and enough of the King's men to put myself together again. So I'll volunteer me and my system as an Alpha test site. I'll also share - if requested - any technical knowledge on structures and algorithms I have that you may feel useful. Thanks for yoiur responsiveness in this matter, Bryan
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