Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:27:26 -0700 From: "David O'Brien" <nobody@NUXI.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com> Subject: Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel Message-ID: <20010720212726.B53370@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <p0510100cb77ced816fa2@[128.113.24.47]>; from drosih@rpi.edu on Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 05:29:10PM -0400 References: <59063B5B4D98D311BC0D0001FA7E452205FD9D73@l04.research.kpn.com> <p0510100cb77ced816fa2@[128.113.24.47]>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 05:29:10PM -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote: > Now, remember that during the boot-up process, the "boot0" code requires > that the "partition to boot from" be the first partition in the slice. > The "boot1" code assumes that the "partition to boot from" is labelled > "partition a". So, that partition which I will want to be "/ for > release 5" needs to be both the first partition in the slice, and it > needs to be labelled "partition a". That is not true. You can put `b' at the beginning of the slice (what I think you mean by "first partition"), followed by `a' and the result boots just fine. [this is for i386 only!, this is not true for the Alpha] > Why does disklabel make it "partition e"? Because it knows that it > should use "partition a" for the partition which will be mounted > as "/". You did a lot of extra work to undo this. Just let sysinstall make it `e' and do your normal install. Then boot into your 4.3 and run disklabel da0s3 (or ad0s3). Go to the `e' and change it to `a' and save the label. Edit /etc/fstab and change the da0s3e to da0s3a. Or better yet, don't create anything within the da0s3 slice -- leave that to when you install -current in that slice. See my other email I just sent for instructions around the next problem sysinstall will give you. > Anyway, the above is a long-winded justification for the following > suggestions: > 1) if disklabel has already been told about '/', then it > should not try and reserve partition 'a' of OTHER SLICES > to also be '/'. The first partition created in those > other slices should just be labelled partition 'a'. I don't want my data partition in say sd0s4 to be `a'. `a' implies root. So your suggestion will irritate some. > 2) similarly, if it already has swap space defined, then > it should not try to reserve partition 'b' of other > slices to be swap. The second partition defined in > those other slices should be labelled partition 'b'. What is wrong with having more than one slice with swap in it? Nothing. Of course I don't really know what you mean by "second partition defined". Sysinstall orders the location of the [BSD] partitions within the slice in the order you create the [BSD] partitions. Sysinstall also knows that swap is always `b' and root is always `a'. Sysinstall skips `d' because `d' used to mean the entire disk in pre-2.2.6. (`d' would behave how others coming from non-PC Unixes would expect `c' to behave) So you'll have to change your wording to be a little more exact for others to follow your proposal. > Thinking about what people said about alpha installs, perhaps the > following is another strategy disklabel could take. On the other > hand, this may cause as many problems as it tries to solve. > > 4) never reserve 'a' or 'b'. Always create partitions in the > order people typed them in, except that WHEN someone says > they want to create '/', THEN both move that partition > to the front of the slice and name it 'a' (renaming other > partitions as needed). NO! Many want to put swap at the "beginning" of the disk as that is the fastest part of the disk. The i386 has no problems booting from a partition that is not located at the beginning of the disk(slice). The problem with the Alpha is people try the same "trick", but it does not work. -- -- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010720212726.B53370>