Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:37:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Drew Derbyshire <ahd@kew.com> To: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Boot file system idea! (Sick or Slick?) Message-ID: <199707221837.OAA15935@pandora.hh.kew.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In terms of a DOS partition making it easier to blow up your FreeBSD installation, Norton DiskEditor will quite cheerfully work on raw disk sectors, and it's install disk is bootable at no extra charge. IMHO, the biggest downside of using FAT as a boot partition are the limited number (4) of slices on a disk -- I normally use all 4, with DOS or NT primary, OS/2 Boot Manager, FreeBSD, and an extended parition. (The splitting of the DOS primary/extended pair insures I get FreeBSD in the first 512M of the disk.) While I can punt the boot manager in favor of System Commander or another scheme, FreeBSD needing two slices is alot of partition table real estate. I doubt the usefulness of it from a recovery standpoint -- I've used DOS to rescue trashed OS/2 configurations for years, but these are usually CONFIG.SYS changes or other text edits on the main partition. A trashed FreeBSD system only has a limited chance of fixing the problem via BFS access -- more problems are fixed via a) the boot configuration editor, b) access to /etc, c) a backup kernel, or d) a kernel regen. Any distinct boot FS also has space problems for old kernels, and the like. All in all, a /boot directory in the current root FS might be better. -- Drew Derbyshire Internet: ahd@kew.com Kendra Electronic Wonderworks Telephone: 617-279-9812 "AT&T is a modem test command."
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199707221837.OAA15935>