Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:08:15 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Passki, Jonathan P" <jpasski@kpmg.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: partition label question, assigning a new label on an existing sy stem... Message-ID: <14791.54719.712450.213462@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <129678951@toto.iv>
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Passki, Jonathan P writes: > Hello All, > Can I take an existing installation of fbsd, which has 5 different partition > labels defined (/, swap, /usr, /usr/home, and /var), create a new partition > label, assign is as a child directory of an existing label (/usr/ports, > under /usr, for example), and not run the risk of corruption to the file > system of /usr? I'm kinda confused on how fbsd (ffs) works w/ mounting new > labels, and don't just want to try it, to see if it works (a dialup line > really is a pain for installing XF86 and gnome). Your terminology is very confused - and confusing. A partition is a piece of a disk - a set of block that can be described by a starting and ending block number. This description also fits a "slice", but they are different thing. Slices are understood by pretty much all x86 operating systems, and are described in the MBR on the disk. Partitions are a Unix thing, and in FreeBSD are *inside* of slices that have a FreeBSD type (except for Dangerously Dedicated disks, which don't have slices, just partitions). To further confuse the issue, most other systems don't have partitions in the BSD sense, and call slices "partitions". Partitions aren't labeled or assigned, they are mounted. Mounting takes a directory somewhere in the existing file system, and causes references to it to actually go to the root of the file system on the partition being mounted. For example "mount /dev/da0s2f /usr/ports" would cause the file system on the f partition of the 2nd slice of the first scsi disk to be accessed through the directory /usr/ports. So, if you're asking if you can mount a partition on /usr/ports without corrupting /usr, the answer is yes. If, on the other hand, you are asking if you can create a new partition whose physical blocks are inside of the ones used by /usr without corrupting /usr, the answer is no. <mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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