On Sat, Jan 20, 2007 at 09:58:00PM +0100, Patrick Useldinger wrote: > > If I have a harddisk with one OBSD slice and one other slice (say > Linux), can I convert that second slice to OBSD A6 and use it from the > same OBSD installation? > If so, what will be the disklabel numbering?
i did this once a while ago (maybe 3.5 land?). iirc, i told disklabel to start at beginning of the first openbsd A6 partition and end at the end of the second openbsd A6 partition, and paid caution to not disklabel up any space in that deadzone in the middle, including not fricking with the beginning sectors of the second A6. i don't believe disklabel will have any numbering for the slices represented by the second A6 partition in your case, if that second A6 is a linux right now. after you A6 it and then tell disklabel about the end of the openbsd portion of the disk, you'll be making new disklabel slices at that region of the disk so disklabel will suggest you "number" (letter) them using the next letter available to it like normal. i also played with disklabel first in readonly mode and told it to use only the second A6 partition and then set about to add slices to it so i could get a handle on what sectors it wanted things to begin at. openbsd rocked this configuration just fine, however i recall i had tried a linux also on that machine at that time, don't remember what kernel version it was - maybe early-to-mid 2.4? anyway, linux saw the two openbsd A6 partitions and i believe it found the slices in the second A6 to be visible, but it puked and refused utterly to access or mount the slices in the second A6 partition - the dmesg said something about invalidity goes without saying that if you could probably slip up and screw the pooch more easily using this type of disk layout, but hell, openbsd's disklabel and fdisk are very powerful and easy to use - i considered it worth my time trying to make this juggling act work as learning experience. -- jared
