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Date:      Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:11:11 -0800
From:      Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
To:        Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/release/sysinstall disks.c 
Message-ID:  <200102222311.f1MNBBf41756@mobile.wemm.org>
In-Reply-To: <20010222203042.C2043@elia.heep.sax.de> 

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J Wunsch wrote:
> [sorry, replying to somewhat old mail, but i've now almost caught up
> with my old commit mails...]
> 
> As Jordan Hubbard wrote:
> 
> > Well, last time we settled the issue, the consensus was that the
> > feature should stop being "waved" at users (e.g. they should not be
> > asked) but that an obscure key sequence be added for getting at
> > dangerously dedicated mode.
> 
> I second this, and it should somehow be visible in a menu of some
> sort.
> 
> Until the stupid fdisk misfeature has been completely removed from
> Peecees where they store the slice starting location in two different
> values (logical block # and CHS value for INT 0x13 call), the only
> possible starting value that is consistent across all possible BIOS
> translations is # 0, and that effectively means DD mode.  So the
> advantage of DD mode is that the disk is transferrable between BIOSes
> using different translations.

If only it were so.  We stopped using DD mode at yahoo because we could not
dd disk images from scsi <-> IDE and use scsi disks on different
controllers (eg: ncr/sym <-> adaptec).  Some combinations of BIOS and boot1
worked, but we had trouble in general.  In the end, we just completely gave
up and now use PXE to create non-DD disks.

We were still seeing people posting regularly on the lists that had
installed DD disks themselves using sysinstall and it caused their SCSI
bios to lock up.

>  We are in general installing all
> ``serious FreeBSD machines'' at work in DD mode, and i'm pretty sure
> there are others as well.  So we really need this option.
> 
> (Needless to say, i hate that fdisk sh*t...)

Bring on EFI!  Pure LBA based! :-)

Cheers,
-Peter
--
Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5


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