Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:45:03 -0700 From: Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt@mac.com> To: Aristedes Maniatis <ari@ish.com.au> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gpart, bsdlabel and fdisk Message-ID: <291F3A8D-A1D7-45CE-8DCC-8B46CB394D45@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <4ADFABE1.2080001@ish.com.au> References: <4ADE995A.8080009@ish.com.au> <5208B24B-0ED9-493F-81E4-04BF33FA9062@mac.com> <4ADFABE1.2080001@ish.com.au>
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On Oct 21, 2009, at 5:48 PM, Aristedes Maniatis wrote: > On 22/10/09 4:54 AM, Marcel Moolenaar wrote: > >>> * is this the future for FreeBSD and we should use gpart from here >>> on? Are the old tools deprecated? >> >> Yes. > > But the 8.0 sysinstall still uses fdisk and bsdlabel? No, sysinstall has embedded code for partitioning. It doesn't use fdisk, bsdlabel nor gpart. > >>> * is the result of using gpart completely different to the >>> bsdlabel/fdisk we've known? Are the partitions on disk quite >>> different? >> >> The on-disk layout is dictated and cannot be different. As such, >> they are the same. > > But some things look different. For example, old style labels were > always of the style ad4s1b. ad4s1b means that ad4 has a MBR and in partition 4 of the MBR is a BSD disklabel that has a 'b' partition. This is exactly the same you get with gpart. > But now the labels appear to be more flexible. Should we be using > old style labels for compatibility with old tools, or does > everything work with the new labelling options? There's not really an old style or a new style. gpart (with GEOM_PART in the kernel) is just a different way of creating on-disk partitions. gpart does add some flexibility in some cases (more than 8 partitions in the BSD disklabel), but it's still a BSD disklabel. > >>> * is there some source of good documentation out there other than >>> the man page for gpart? >> >> man gpart. > > Hmmm... I was hoping for something more useful than that response. > Where is it documented that I have to do "echo 'a 1' | fdisk -f - / > dev/ad4" to make a disk bootable? man fdisk :-) Or with gpart: # gpart set -a active -i 1 ad4 > Is there a work-in-progress handbook page somewhere that describes > the overall process of setting up disks with the new tools? It typically takes a while for that to catch up with events. I don't think there's a WIP just yet... -- Marcel Moolenaar xcllnt@mac.com
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