Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 18:36:43 -0700 From: Scott Blachowicz <sab@seanet.com> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, Scott Blachowicz <sab@seanet.com>, Dan Nelson <dnelson@emsphone.com> Cc: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MSDOS extended partitions and "slices" Message-ID: <19980902183643.A5424@dniquote.com> In-Reply-To: <199809030043.SAA02590@lariat.lariat.org>; from Brett Glass on Wed, Sep 02, 1998 at 06:41:52PM -0600 References: <199809022113.PAA00535@lariat.lariat.org> <199808080608.AAA16222@lariat.lariat.org> <199808021131.FAA12204@lariat.lariat.org> <199808080608.AAA16222@lariat.lariat.org> <199809021901.MAA21131@two.sabami.seaslug.org> <199809022113.PAA00535@lariat.lariat.org> <19980902175652.A11500@emsphone.com> <199809030005.SAA02250@lariat.lariat.org> <19980902172833.A3976@dniquote.com> <199809030043.SAA02590@lariat.lariat.org>
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On Wed, Sep 02, 1998 at 06:41:52PM -0600, Brett Glass wrote:
> The latter is actually more flexible, as it accounts for any scheme in
> which one of the four possible "slices" (to use the FreeBSD parlance) is
> then subdivided. (IBM's standard allows for no more than four.)
But, so does the current scheme (or what am I missing here?). Anything that
corresponds to a DOS drive gets a slice number. I meant flexible in that
you could partition up your FreeBSD slice without having to worry about
fdisk/DOS re-partitioning. But if you call the logical drive /dev/wd0s2a,
it's harder to subdivide into BSD partitions (I suppose you could call the
partitions /dev/wd0s2aa, wd0s2ab, etc but that looks weird). Or maybe it
should go to the SysV style naming of /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 or whatever to get
enough levels of subdivisions :-).
> What's more, it reflects the hierarchy better; there's no guessing about
> the device name of "the second logical DOS drive in the extended DOS
> partition." With the scheme that's being used now, you have to know what
> other partitions contain before you can figure out the name.
I thought the current scheme would always have the 2nd logical DOS drive in
the extended DOS partition as /dev/wd0s6. Slices 1 thru 4 are defined as
the primary partition slices, slice 5 is the first logical, slice 6 is the
second logical, etc...
On the other hand...if it's possible to have a DOS partition get turned
into an extended partition, then I see the point...for instance, if you
start off with
slice 1 - normal partition
slice 2 - normal partition
slice 3 - Extended partition
slice 5 - 1st logical drive
slice 6 - 2nd logical drive
slice 4 - empty
then you turn slice 2 into an extended partition keeping slice 3 as an
extended partition, then you have trouble because you can't predict the slice
numbers that get assigned to the logical drive inside slice 3. Is the
number of logical drives in an extended partition limited to 4 as well? If
so, then you would end up with slices numbers 5-8 assigned to the 1st set of
logical drives and 9-12 assigned to the 2nd set of logical drives, I imagine.
Blech.
--
Scott Blachowicz
sab@seanet.com
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