From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 15 19:46:25 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 931C6106564A for ; Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:46:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dimitry@andric.com) Received: from tensor.andric.com (cl-327.ede-01.nl.sixxs.net [IPv6:2001:7b8:2ff:146::2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4D51D8FC14 for ; Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:46:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dimitry@andric.com) Received: from [IPv6:2001:7b8:3a7:0:9495:274b:b36c:ce34] (unknown [IPv6:2001:7b8:3a7:0:9495:274b:b36c:ce34]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by tensor.andric.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 9137311F838; Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:46:24 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <496F928F.6010807@andric.com> Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:46:23 +0100 From: Dimitry Andric User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090108 Shredder/3.0b2pre MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Marcel Moolenaar References: <496D0364.2060505@psg.com> <47d0403c0901131335h46e7b151p3768de9a3e2c2027@mail.gmail.com> <085BEE07-BAE5-4A45-A14D-9587987FAA5C@mac.com> <496F44FA.1070004@andric.com> <48C1C477-B7BE-43B0-AC57-9DEB7BF9AA88@mac.com> <496F7347.4060007@andric.com> <496F8D8A.1060508@andric.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Randy Bush , Luiz Otavio O Souza , George Neville-Neil , Ben Kaduk , current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GEOM and moving to CURRENT from 7.1 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:46:25 -0000 On 2009-01-15 20:35, Marcel Moolenaar wrote: > You need a boot sector for the BIOS to jump into, but > it doesn't have to be a MBR with slices. That's why > a DD has something that looks an awful lot like a MBR > in the first sector. It could very well be boot sector > of an FAT* file system. I can confirm, that wiping out the partition table (but not the boot code), using "bsdlabel -B /dev/ad0s1", makes "s1" disappear. Subsequent boots can then be done from /dev/ad0a, and this works both for "old" kernels, e.g. from before r186240 and after. And at least VMware's BIOS isn't scared of empty partition tables. ;)