Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 13:47:21 +0100 From: Bernd Walter <ticso@cicely8.cicely.de> To: Joerg Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/kern subr_diskmbr.c Message-ID: <20011210134721.C11774@cicely8.cicely.de> In-Reply-To: <20011210110438.A72135@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <20011209102129.F97235@uriah.heep.sax.de> <200112092015.fB9KFJe01121@mass.dis.org> <200112092200.fB9M0J660085@uriah.heep.sax.de> <20011209224310.A17244@dragon.nuxi.com> <200112092200.fB9M0J660085@uriah.heep.sax.de> <20011210070333.D88F33810@overcee.netplex.com.au> <20011210110438.A72135@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 11:04:38AM +0100, Joerg Wunsch wrote: > As Peter Wemm wrote: > > > Can you please clarify for me what specifically you do not like.. Is it: > > - the cost of 32K of disk space on an average disk these days? > > (and if so, is reducing that to one sector instead of 62 sufficient?) > > The idea of a "geometry" that does not even remotely resembles the > actual geometry and only causes additional hassles, like disks being > not portable between controllers that have a different idea of that > geometry (since the design of this table is missing an actual field > to specify the geometry). Incidentally, it's only what you call > "intuition" that finally stumpled across the 10-years old Jolitz > fake fdisk values. So IOW, it took the BIOS vendors ten years to > produce a BIOS that would break on it :), and the breakage (division > by 0) was only since they needed black magic in order to infer a > geometry value that was short-sightedly never specified in the table > itself. Two points to add why I would miss that feature: - Having bootable media such as MOs or zips. - There is no way to find out the BIOS geometry when creating a bootable disk inside FreeBSD. > > - you don't like typing "s1" in the device name? > > Aesthetically, yes, this one too. :) > > > "disklabel -rw ad2 auto" is one form. That should not use fdisk at all. > > This is quite fine, and nobody wants that to go away. > > Good to hear. > > Well, actually i always use "disklabel -Brw daN auto", partly because > this sequence is wired into my fingers, and since i mentally DAbelieve > that having more bootstrappable disks couldn't harm. ;-) As laid out > in another message, i eventually got the habit of even including a > root partition mirror on each disk as well. So each of my disks should > be able to boot a single-user FreeBSD. I was already happy to have them, but I can't create a propper bootable fdisk table without knowing what the BIOS thinks about geometry. It is the typical problem that you boot DOS, fdisk /mbr and then install FreeBSD... > > I advocate that the bootable form (where boot1.s is expected to do the > > job of both the mbr *and* the partition boot) is evil and should at the very > > least be fixed. > > Fixing is OK to me. I think to recognize the dummy fdisk table of DD mode, > it would be totally sufficient to verify slice 4 being labelled with 50000 > blocks, and the other slices being labelled 0. We do not support any > physical disk anymore that is only 25 MB in size :). So all the remaining Flash Media comes in mind - but I hardly beleave it to be exactly 25M. > (INT 0x13 bootstrap) values could be anything -- even something that most > BIOSes would recognize as a valid fdisk table. > > > It should be something that is explicitly activated, and > > not something that you get whether you want it or not. > > I don't fully understand that. DD mode has always been an explicit > decision. Even in the above, the specification of -B explicitly tells > to install that bootstrap. The example in Handbook 12.3.2.2 should get the B flag removed. It's about adding disks and not about adding bootable disks. > As David O'Brien wrote: > > > > Its design is antique. Or rather: it's missing a design. > > > Jorg, why not just buy an Alpha or Sun Blade and run FreeBSD on it?? > > I don't see much value in an Alpha. Maybe a Sun some day, who knows? Not for the far future - but I would still prefer them over a PC. But my biggest hopes go for the UltraSparc port. -- B.Walter COSMO-Project http://www.cosmo-project.de ticso@cicely.de Usergroup info@cosmo-project.de To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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