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Date:      Sun, 19 Nov 2000 15:40:09 -0700
From:      Jason Spencer <jspencer@epsb.net>
To:        stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Dangerously Dedicated
Message-ID:  <f04330101b63e03840335@[10.250.1.81]>
In-Reply-To: <200011192214.eAJMEPG03693@billy-club.village.org>
References:  <3A18304B.689C2CFE@glue.umd.edu>  <200011191657.eAJGvnZ63007@cwsys.cwsent.com> <3A180EA0.31926227@glue.umd.edu> <20001119094725.B66448@dragon.nuxi.com> <200011192214.eAJMEPG03693@billy-club.village.org>

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At 3:14 PM -0700 11/19/2000, Warner Losh wrote:

>: I'm a little confused here. Why are slices demanded by the Intel
>: arhictecture?
>
>The BIOS demands that they are there.  At least some modern BIOSes
>don't do well when they aren't there.
>
>It is the PC-AT architecture to be more specific.
>
>: We've been successfully using DD mode for years now, if slices are 
>"demanded"
>: what kind of voodoo have we been using?
>
>The problem is the bogus MBR that the DD writes confuses some BIOSes
>and causes your disks to be non-bootable.
>
>: Is there some way or ways in which the 4-slot table is superior to DD-mode?
>
>The 4 slot table already is there in DD mode.  It just happens to
>contain completely bogus data.
>
>: You mentioned not having enough space for boot0. Why can't we just change
>: DD-mode to have space for boot0?
>
>Sure, you can do that by putting a proper MBR on the disk :-).  The
>whole problem comes in with the bogus MBR that DD puts on the disk.

So maybe we need to change the docs. When I chose DD mode I thought 
"Okay, I'm not going to be using MS *anything* so DD mode will just 
reduce some overhead perhaps and make things work like the more sane 
platforms." I had no idea that actually I was faking out the BIOS 
with bogus data.

I thought "dangerous" was used in the cute sense of the word ;)

So does this mean I'm going to have to format my disks when I say, 
upgrade to 5.0?


On a related note, is this anything to worry about?

$ pstat -s
Device          1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Type
/dev/ad0s1b        563072        0   563072     0%    Interleaved
/dev/rad2s1b       267248        0   267248     0%    Interleaved

One of my swap partitions shows up as a raw device and the other doesn't.

-j.


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