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Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 22:52:49 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: "Michael W. Lucas" <mwlucas@michaelwlucas.com>
Subject: Re: gpart and bsdlabel
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On Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:11:14 -0400, Michael W. Lucas wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm gradually switching from the familiar and comfortable agony of
> fdisk/disklabel to gpart.
> 
> In the past, our org has avoided certain partition letters on specific
> drives. If the drive isn't a boot drive, it has no 'a" partition. If
> it has no swap, it has no 'b' partition.

This is correct. :-)



> gpart assigns partition letters in the order in which they're created.
> 
> Is there a way to specify which partition letter you want to create,
> or start with, or something?

Even though gpart can work with MBR partitioning, its
primary goal is to be _the_ tool for GPT partitioning,
which is "today's standard".

Is there any _technical_ reason you're using MBR partitioning
scheme with gpart (instead of with fdisk and bsdlabel)?

If not, you can use GPT partitioning, resulting in partition
numbers, and no slicing part. Additionally, you can use
labels in most places in order to avoid letters or numbers
on device names.

See the -i option in "man gpart".

Also see for further inspiration of moving away from MBR
and the traditional tools:

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-glabel.html

To be honest, I can't actually answer your question because
I still use fdisk and bsdlabel when _intendedly_ having to
deal with MBR partitioning (technically required exceptions),
and gpart for regular use, with GPT partitioning, of course. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...