From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 21 05:17:17 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F00991065676 for ; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:17:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ari@ish.com.au) Received: from fish.ish.com.au (eth5921.nsw.adsl.internode.on.net [59.167.240.32]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C9908FC14 for ; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:17:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ip-149.ish.com.au ([203.29.62.149]:62282) by fish.ish.com.au with esmtpa (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1N0Tds-0007GM-1e; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:21:48 +1100 Message-ID: <4ADE995A.8080009@ish.com.au> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:17:14 +1100 From: Aristedes Maniatis User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5pre) Gecko/20091019 Shredder/3.0pre MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jurgen Weber Subject: gpart, bsdlabel and fdisk X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:17:18 -0000 We are setting up a FreeBSD system from scratch and wanting to understand the new gpart utility. Our goal is to create a ZFS bootable install (mirror). In the past our approach has been to: 1. fdisk (allocate entire disk) 2. partition (1Gb UFS boot partition, swap and rest empty for ZFS) 3. set up ZFS [1] Now we want to understand how to avoid the bootable UFS partition (which causes us some grief), but there is very little information about gpart as the tool to do it. I've found various guides (eg [2]) but am a little underwhelmed by the documentation, especially with magic commands like this as part of the set up: echo 'a 1' | fdisk -f - /dev/ad4 It appears that gpart is largely replacing fdisk and bsdlabel. * is this the future for FreeBSD and we should use gpart from here on? Are the old tools deprecated? * we tried to reinstall the machine with some 7.2 CDs but the gparted disks caused fdisk to crash. Is this expected? * is the result of using gpart completely different to the bsdlabel/fdisk we've known? Are the partitions on disk quite different? * is there some source of good documentation out there other than the man page for gpart? * has the MBR changed now with gpart? Thanks Ari Maniatis [1] https://www.ish.com.au/solutions/articles/freebsdzfs [2] http://outpost.h3q.com/patches/manageBE/create-FreeBSD-ZFS-bootfs.txt -- --------------------------> ish http://www.ish.com.au Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001 GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A