Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 01:08:28 +0100 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> To: Mike Andrews <mandrews@bit0.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New BSD Installer Message-ID: <4F3D9A7C.7080900@quip.cz> In-Reply-To: <4F3ACDE7.8060003@bit0.com> References: <4F355A5B.9080007@rewt.org.uk> <4F35743B.4020302@os2.kiev.ua> <4F37DBA3.7030304@cran.org.uk> <20120213195554.O46120@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <092c01cceb40$2dc8f240$895ad6c0$@fisglobal.com> <CAN6yY1uVhXMntWaK=P4dPrKY3aLR2fsKMWfS7Ncvpwy-XKM31Q@mail.gmail.com> <095a01cceb54$04a38fb0$0deaaf10$@fisglobal.com> <4F3ACDE7.8060003@bit0.com>
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Mike Andrews wrote: > On 2/14/2012 3:05 PM, Devin Teske wrote: >> Please don't get rid of fdisk or bsdlabel as they are (and forever >> will be) >> required to do things like: >> >> 1. scripted formatting of a thumb drive >> >> 2. automated probing of disk information (fdisk -p) >> >> 3. Other tasks that are not suitably handled by curses-based utilities >> >> For example, the following command will create a second Windows >> partition on a >> thumb drive without user interaction: >> >> echo "p 2 0x0c * *" | fdisk -f - /dev/da0 >> >> If you take away fdisk, how am I supposed to achieve the above? > > /sbin/gpart add -t 12 -i 2 da0 > > (Untested, but that should work...) > > gpart is very scriptable, and still handles MBR and bsdlabel partitions > if you need to work with removable media or volumes that will never be > larger than 2 TB. "gpart list" and "gpart show" would get you all the > machine-parsable stuff you'd ever need. > > The 2 TB limit is *the* reason to move from MBR+bsdlabel to GPT though. > Even without RAID, 3 TB disks exist already. :) With FreeBSD's boot > code, you don't even need an EFI-capable machine to boot from a > GPT-partitioned device. For non-removable media, it's time to move on. > Really. :) Even on smaller 250 GB disks, I'm using GPT just because > there's no reason not to... it's just cleaner and it was easier to write > gpart scripts than it was to script fdisk/bsdlabel scripts anyway. Please don't mix two things together. gpart can replace fdisk and bsdlabel, but GPT vs. MBR is a different thing. GPT doesn't play nice with GEOM classes which store their metadata on last sector. For example, you can't use gmirror of a whole drives and use GPT on top of this mirror. (and gmirror is not the only one) Miroslav Lachman
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