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Date:      Wed, 3 Feb 2010 13:35:18 -0500
From:      Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu>
To:        Steve Franks <bahamasfranks@gmail.com>
Cc:        Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>, FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: can't make an 'a' slice except with auto-defaults
Message-ID:  <20100203183518.GB15860@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <539c60b91002030942r1349452ds6c0a9f71ea498fb0@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <539c60b91002021859h6761ef1fk244d69000e089c65@mail.gmail.com> <20100203151808.GC15086@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <539c60b91002030926r28d67355u3930058b9fc759d7@mail.gmail.com> <20100203183722.06ead46a.freebsd@edvax.de> <539c60b91002030942r1349452ds6c0a9f71ea498fb0@mail.gmail.com>

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On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 10:42:42AM -0700, Steve Franks wrote:

> > Why so complicated? The command
> >
> >        # newfs /dev/ad1
> 
> I'm looking to mirror/dup/image the entire system to something I can
> stick in another system.    I hear there's good reasons for not
> running my whole system off of a single partition.  

The three main reasons are:

Backups.    It is often easier to manage backups when the disk storage
is thoughtfully divided into reasonable and functional pieces.

Emergencies.  If your system crashes, especially if it is due to
some disk problem, you may need to boot your system to single user.
In that case you will start with only / (root) mounted as read-only.
Having a fairly small root partition means the chance of having the
bad disk area be in what you are trying to mount is reduced (not
eliminated, of course).  Anyway, you may be more able to get up to
a minimal system and then work on recovering the other partitions.

Boot time. A possible benefit is that only root needs to be fsck-ed before
other things can start.   Remaining fsck-s can run in parallel.  This
will take you less time to get back up after an abnormal shutdown - 
such as from a sudden power loss.

>     The 'other' system
> has 7.2 and has devolved to a 25% chance of a hard freeze every time I
> unplug a ucom device (seems to have cropped up between 7.2-release and
> 7.2-stable#3).  8 likes usb, so I like 8.

FreeBSd 8 is a good choice.

////jerry

> 
> Steve
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