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Date:      Thu, 17 Aug 1995 11:01:12 +0300
From:      kallio@jyu.fi (Seppo Kallio)
To:        Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ** How to add second SCSI disk ? **
Message-ID:  <v01530502ac5899adf3a3@[130.234.41.39]>

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>Seppo Kallio stands accused of saying:
>> I am very dissapointed: Adding second SCSI disk drive to the FreeBSD system
>> seems to be very complicated!
>
>Nooo, it's very trivial.  I can't understand why people have so much
>trouble with it 8(

Maybe it is not so trivial? People do not usually ask if things are
trivial. Maybe people have different views what is trivial and what is not
;-)

For me:

The fdisk + disklabel in the FreeBSD 2.0.5 installation "script" is trivial
(if we assume that it is finding the correct geometry).

Using fdisk and writing disklabel entry after reading man fdisk and man
disklabel does not success most of us (?) in 8 hours if we have no real
good samples or someone telling you how to do it.

Why does the (Standalone) Install not have the command "Write Disklabel
Now!"? Is there some technical problem? Or do you just think the procedure
in Install is more complicated than doing it with fdisk+disklabel+newfs?

>> Is one solution to make new disk with root partition only and install some
>> minimal system on it?
>
>No.  Feed the disk to fdisk -i, then disklabel it, then newfs your
>filesystems.  Should take all of a minute or two, once you work out
>what's going on.

Most of Unix managing is very simple and fast--if you know what to do and
how. The problem is usually knowing what and how to do.

Reading the manuals of fdisk, disklabel and newfs takes more than 1-2
minutes and understanding them takes hours.

>> 2. How is it possible that this is not a FAQ?
>
>It _is_ a FAQ, but nobody's written an entry for it.  Tell you what,
>if you want, I'll talk you through it & you can write the entry. Deal? 8)

I did it like this:

First: I did use Linux fdisk (sorry). I could not understand FreeBSD
       fdisk questions.
       Maybe I did not use fdisk -i, just fdisk and got lost.
       Create Extended partition (?) and set code 165 to the partition type
       (convert to hex first)

Second: I did write entry

st31230n|Sepon Levy: \
        :ty=winchester:dt=scsi:se#512:nt#64:ns#32:nc#1010:\
        :pa#2068448:oa#0:ba#4096:fa#512:ta=4.2BSD: \
        :pc#2068448:oc#0:

Explanations:
st31230n is the name for this entry, use the disk type as name
Sepon Levy is the label of the disk
se#512 is the total sector count of the disk, look the papers with the disk (?)
Next parameters for partition a (root)
(Remember, a=root, b=swap, c=total disk, e,f,g are other partitions you can use)
ps#2068448 is the total block count (=se*nt*ns-something? uh ...)
oa# is the ofset of partition a, this starting from 0
ba# minimum space reservation unit (4096 bytes, multible of 512)
fa# is the physical block size (?)
Next paramters for partition c (the whole disk)
pc# block count of whole disk
oc# zero only valid value

The I did something like

disklabel -r -s sd1 st31230n

then

newfs /dev/sd1a

I think it is very complicated. Actually I did add a swap partition also,
but cannot remember the parameters for disktab, they take some time to
calculate (more than 1-2 minutes).

Writing FAQ for this is not easy. One should explain main parameters in the
disktab entry and how to use fdisk. newfs is easy.

Seppo

--
 +--    Seppo Kallio       -----             kallio@jyu.fi              ---+
 !    Computing Center       !   Fax +358-41-603611 Phone +358-41-603606   !
 !  University of Jyvaskyla  !         http://www.jyu.fi/~kallio           !
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