Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:55:47 +0800 From: John <summer@computerdatasafe.com.au> Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Which disk is which Message-ID: <4133A263.7050501@computerdatasafe.com.au> In-Reply-To: <4133545B.5080704@daleco.biz> References: <200408301318.40078.summer@computerdatasafe.com.au> <4133545B.5080704@daleco.biz>
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Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. wrote: > Hi, John ... > > As you cc'ed doc@, I'm sending your original mail to them > also, so they'll have some background. Comments inline. > > John Summerfield wrote: > >> I've booted a 5.2.1 miniinstall CD and got to the point where I choose >> which disk to install onto. >> >> My choices are >> ad0 >> da0 >> >> Great. How do I know which disk is which? _I_ could work it out if the >> panel displayed information such as >> Brand >> Capacity >> >> >> > > Read the *text* in the handbook. As an example, the following > appears on the page that you linked in your recent crosspost to doc@: > > "Consider what would happen if you had two IDE hard disks, one > as the master on the first IDE controller, and one as the master > on the second IDE controller. If FreeBSD numbered these as it > found them, as ad0 and ad1 then everything would work. > > But if you then added a third disk, as the slave device on the first > IDE controller, it would now be ad1, and the previous ad1 would " .... > > <>This goes on for another 3-4 paragraphs; it is a discussion of why > FreeBSD > has basically "hardcoded" disk drive names/numbers into the kernel, (e.g., > why IDE primary master will always be ad0, why secondary slave will always > be ad3, etc). > Then again, just above figure 2-16 (which is the same as figure 2-20 > but without an "X" in the checkbox): > > Figure 2-16 > <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-steps.html#SYSINSTALL-FDISK-DRIVE1>; > shows an example from a system with two IDE disks. > They have been called ad0 and ad2. > > > Based on reading these sections/statements of the manual, it would seem > somewhat obvious that ad0 is the primary master IDE hard disk. It is > hard, then, at least for me, to see this as a fault of the documentation. > The drawback to this is that you're writing from the POV of someone who knows all this. I'm not, I don't. I have booted some other installers on this setup and find they do provide more information than the bare OS-dependant name. Ideally, on my system, the installer would say: AD0 Internal IDE drive, primary master, WD102AA 10.2 Gb DA0 External USB drive, Cypress ATMR04-0 40 Gb so most, even modestly, technical people could instantly recognise which disk is which.
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