From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jul 28 21:59:37 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB329E8C for ; Sun, 28 Jul 2013 21:59:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from wonkity.com (wonkity.com [67.158.26.137]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5173D2CAD for ; Sun, 28 Jul 2013 21:59:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: from wonkity.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wonkity.com (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP id r6SLxRQl011947; Sun, 28 Jul 2013 15:59:27 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from localhost (wblock@localhost) by wonkity.com (8.14.7/8.14.7/Submit) with ESMTP id r6SLxQ0N011944; Sun, 28 Jul 2013 15:59:27 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 15:59:26 -0600 (MDT) From: Warren Block To: Conny Andersson Subject: Re: FreeBSD slices and the Boot Manager In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20130728080912.c6ce592a.freebsd@edvax.de> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.4.3 (wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Sun, 28 Jul 2013 15:59:27 -0600 (MDT) Cc: Polytropon , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 21:59:37 -0000 On Sun, 28 Jul 2013, Conny Andersson wrote: > Hi Warren and Polytropon, > > A few minutes ago I booted up from a FreeBSD-8.4-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img > to experience that it is sysinstall that is used in that release. > > Next, I did a 'dummy' custom installation. And, as I supposed sysinstall > recognized disk ada0 as ad4 and disk ada1 as ad6. Then I aborted sysinstall > and rebooted in to my FreeBSD 8.3-Release. > > Well, AHCI (Serial ATA Advanced Host Controller Interface driver) seems > involved when identifying disks and slices. But, only on newer computers who > has this option set to on in the BIOS. Maybe, bsdinstall in FreeBSD 9.0 and > onwards can make use of AHCI directly. At some point, the old ad(4) driver was replaced with the new ada(4) driver. To provide backwards compatability, the old ad devices names are still available in /dev. I don't know when FreeBSD 8.X switched to the ada(4) driver. Neither ad nor ada devices require AHCI. If it is available, it gives a small but noticeable speed increase. Otherwise, it should make no difference. > More apropos labels: The latest BIOS version 2.4.0 for Dell T1500 does not > support UEFI/GPT/GUID. As far as I know, Dell only have the Unified > Extensible Firmware Interface on its PowerEdge servers. There is more than one kind of label. There are filesystem labels like we are talking about, there are GPT labels, there are generic labels. The ones being suggested are filesystem labels: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/labels.html FreeBSD supports GPT without UEFI. It doesn't matter in this case, since you already have MBR.