From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Aug 12 00:27:07 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA08489 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 00:27:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from resnet.uoregon.edu (resnet.uoregon.edu [128.223.144.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA08457 for ; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 00:26:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu) Received: from localhost (dwhite@localhost) by resnet.uoregon.edu (8.8.5/8.8.8) with SMTP id AAA09749; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 00:26:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 00:26:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White To: Brett Glass cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MSDOS extended partitions and "slices" In-Reply-To: <199808102342.RAA10483@lariat.lariat.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, Brett Glass wrote: > >It's a decent argument, but: > > > >1. There is a maximum of 8 partitions that can be defined this way (a-h). > > Why? Because it was programmed that way. > Even if, for some reason, there's a limitation in the UNIX file system > software that precludes more than 8, there should not be any problem > doing this for MS-DOS "extended partitions" within MSDOSFS. > >2. The B partition is only used for swap. > >3. Letters C and D are reserved for the slice partition and the > > whole-disk partition in BSD parlance, respectively. > >4. I bet I'd get people trying to disklabel an extended MSDOS partition. > > Those are the conventions for a UNIX partition. But why apply them to > other kinds? Because it would be inconsistent otherwise. > It's a good idea, methinks, to allow as much interoperability as > possible, and to make sure that the device letters reflect the actual > structure of whatever file system is being used. Otherwise, support > for other systems, such as NTFS, etc., could be hampered. I await your patches. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message