Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 13:18:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Virtues of a DOS Partition (was: Some serious gripes about `fdisk' and also `booteasy'. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9910171241160.8534-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <3113.940136717@monkeys.com>
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On Sat, 16 Oct 1999, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > But anyway, I shouldn't have to stoop to actually handling floppies that > contain... dare I say it... (yecch, gag) software from REDMOND WASHINGTON! As noted earlier in this thread, a dos partition is a good way to let the FreeBSD installer know about the geometry on the hard drive. Whatever the personal antipathy toward Microsoft, the mass success of the MSWindows/Intel platform--the pc--is what has made this hardware as inexpensive as it is. That the hardware itself displays its origins should come as no surprise. These computers are historically dos machines, and the first platform for which most manufacturers of cards write software. A dos partition is useful, therefore, for running the setup programs manufacturers provide for ethernet cards and possibly others--e.g., taking them out of pnp mode or setting addresses and irq's. More sophisticated partitioning and boot managing utilities, such as Partition Magic and System Commander, are also dos programs. System Commander keeps its files in a dos partition. Although these programs (Partition Magic and the ethernet utilities) can be run from a dos boot floppy, you have to be sure you've got them around for later use (reinstalling a trashed mbr, for example). The free boot managers that come with FreeBSD can also be installed from dos; I think this is the only way osbsbeta can be installed. As I recall fips, a free partitioning utility, is also a dos program. Finally, most computer professionals in today's world are going to be working with networks on which some computers run some version of MSWindows, or programs whose output will be accessed by computers running these operating systems. So it makes sense to be able to handle the MS world as well as the unix world. Annelise To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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