Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 13:10, Warren Block wrote: bsdinstall(8) has a curses partition editor. There is probably a trick needed to use that outside of an install context. Just run bsdinstall partedit. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 08 Jul 2012 23:27:23 -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote: You mean the non-subdivided 1.44 MB or other capacity of a floppy is called a partition? Let's try to use the correct terminology. If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support for partitioning. Same question for CDs? Not sure. A CD contains an ISO-9660 file system without an enclosing partition per se. If we look back into OS history, we find the magical 'c' partition. Historically, partition letters have been reserved for specific purposes: the 'a' partition means a bootable partition, 'b' is a swap partition, and 'c' is the whole disk, refering either to the disk device (da0c == da0) or the whole slice (da0s1c == da0s1). You _can_ put a UFS file system, even many of them, on a CD, that is possible, but don't expect any Windows to be able to deal with it. :-) Also, a file system can be contained in an image file. Or is this a virtual partition? As devices and real files are quite the same, you can mount a file system that is contained in a file. You typically do this when doing data recovery and forensic analysis, where your starting point is an image file of a disk, a slice or a partition. You then connect it to a virtual node (vnconfig - e. g. md0) and then you mount it as if it was a device file. Might # tar xf /dev/da0 work in other BSDs or even other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux, using the appropriate device name where applicable in place of da0? That's quite possible. I've been speaking about tar as the most universal file system which isn't one -- I've been using it on floppies many many years ago, to transfer data among Sun Sparcstations, Linux workstations and a BSD server. It's important not to use any fancy tar features, and of course you need to know the device names corresponding to the floppy drive which differ across the systems, but it is possible to first use fdformat, then tar cf, then tar xf. This of course happened before the dawn of networking. :-) While that particular construst could probably not be booted, it is possible to boot from a floppy or image file that does not contain a file system. For bare booting, a file system isn't that essential. You just have to make sure the boot chain is properly resolved, such as for example the FreeBSD boot mechanism works. You can read more about it in man 8 boot. Some of the disk images on the System Rescue CD (sysresccd.org) are not viewable/mountable as file systems. I haven't looked into this particular one, but that is very well possible. A CD doesn't _need_ to be in a ISO-9660 format (even though it's the default data format). The _implementation_ of the boot mechanism matters: it could even select from several different boot images stored in some arbitrary (but addressable) manner on the CD. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS unless you need windows 98 support partitionless USB drives works absolutely fine clear it out dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=64k count=1 format newfs_msdos /dev/da0 Same question for CDs? Not sure. A CD contains an ISO-9660 file system without an enclosing partition per se. In FreeBSD (as well as NetBSD, OpenBSD, maybe linux) CD is just block device. You may make disklabel on it, and whatever you like. In excuse of OS (windows) CD/DVD MUST BE CD9660 or UDF formatted without partitions. You may record NTFS formatted DVD, perfectly readable on FReeBSD, unreadable under windows in spite it is windows native filesystem. -- You may actually make hybrid DVD that will show whatever you want under windoze, and have real data in tar format. below the recipe: 1) prepare windows-vizible layout, all needed viruses and autorun.inf in some directory and do mkisofs -J -q .|dd of=/path/to/tempfile bs=512 skip=1 2) tar cf - /path/to/tempfile ...list of what you want to be tarred...|growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cd0=- now use tar to read files from that DVD, while in windows it will run viruses properly. a virtual partition? As devices and real files are quite the same, you can mount a file system that is contained in a file. You typically do this when doing data recovery and forensic analysis, where your starting point is an image file of a disk, a slice or a partition. You then connect it to a virtual node (vnconfig - e. g. md0) and vnconfig is quite in old FreeBSD today it is mdconfig ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 09/07/2012 11:16, Polytropon wrote: If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support for partitioning. Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' mode, containing nothing except the filesystem. The way you'd mount it would be: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/point You can do the same with a normal USB or other disk using: newfs /dev/da0 mount /dev/da0 /mnt/point The reason it's called 'dangerously dedicated' I think is that other systems - or even the same system months/years later if you forget and run the wrong tools - won't know there's a filesystem there and it's easy to think the disk's empty. If you're on an old system and run 'gpart show da0' and don't see a partition table it's quite easy to forget to check if da0 itself contains a filesystem. When using GPT what were called slices are now partitions, and instead of 'ada0s1a' (disk 0, slice 1, partition a) you just have 'ada0p1'. A partition table supports up to 4096 entries (gpart creates one supporting 128 by default) so there's no need for the freebsd container any more - you just create freebsd-boot, freebsd-ufs, freebsd-zfs, freebsd-swap entries e.g. 'gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 64g da0'. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' they use dangerously obsolete mode. nobody use them at all. disk's empty. If you're on an old system and run 'gpart show da0' and don't see a partition table it's quite easy to forget to check if da0 itself contains a filesystem. unless it is a normal way of using it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 09/07/2012 13:17, Wojciech Puchar wrote: they use dangerously obsolete mode. nobody use them at all. A company I worked with were still distributing files on floppy disks as recently as 2009. They _are_ obsolete, but I suspect plenty of people still use them. unless it is a normal way of using it. That's right - I was thinking of my system where I destroyed all the data on a HDD because it didn't have a partition table. When I ran the FreeBSD installer and saw the disk was 'empty' I forgot it had a filesystem and reformatted it. Obviously people using floppy or USB disks would be more ready for there to be data on the disk without a partition table. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
A company I worked with were still distributing files on floppy disks as recently as 2009. quite funny :) They _are_ obsolete, but I suspect plenty of people still use them. unless it is a normal way of using it. That's right - I was thinking of my system where I destroyed all the data on a HDD because it didn't have a partition table. When I ran the FreeBSD only your fault, not FreeBSD. Why you connected your data disk at first place. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 09/07/2012 13:29, Wojciech Puchar wrote: only your fault, not FreeBSD. Why you connected your data disk at first place. I didn't say it was FreeBSD's fault. If I thought it was, I would have fixed it! -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 21:00:40 +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 16:06, Ian Smith wrote: In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. The more expensive disks of course support TRIM so you'd want to pass -t to newfs to enable it. Thanks. Next time I blow around AU$455 on a 120GB flashdrive, I'll be glad to be better informed about getting the most out of it :) At least with sysinstall|sade you can set extra newfs options such as -t, and as importantly for me, you can toggle whether or not to newfs particular partition/s, such as leaving say /home alone on an existing partitioning, which didn't seem straightforward with bsdinstall last I tried (admittedly at 9.0-BETA1) but I've not followed later updates. I might take Matthew's suggestion and try the PCBSD 9 installer; I did boot a PCBSD 8 memstick at one stage, and was surprisingly impressed - or I could use freebsd-update instead of sources to go from 7.4 to 9.1 It's the options that drive ya crazy -- Silly Symphony C.'83 cheers, Ian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012, Bruce Cran wrote: On 09/07/2012 11:16, Polytropon wrote: If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support for partitioning. Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' mode, containing nothing except the filesystem. Dangerously dedicated refers to a disk with a bsdlabel partition table and boot block. Floppies don't have even that, it's just a raw filesystem. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 07:44:28AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote: You don't. You wipe the FAT32 with fdisk and make a FreeBSD slice on it. Then you can bsdlabel it with one partition and newfs it. Or you can repeat 100 times more that you have to make fdisk and bsdlabel. you don't, and it doesn't make sense You can do many things as indicated in several posts and most of them will work if you want it that way. But, they do not answer the question as posted. Turning the USB stick into a FreeBSD type or mounting it as MSDOSFS does answer that question. I am not sure why the rabid promotion of non-slicing, but it not worth all the extra bandwidth applied to it. jerry ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
Magdeburg, Germany I have used gpart to partition a USB flash drive into FreeBSD boot partition, root partition and swap partition. making swap partition on USB pendrive is at least stupid. if you won't swap at all - wasted space. If you will it would be so slow and wear USB pendrive so quickly that you certainly don't want this. bsdlabel -w device bsdabel -e device and make a partition start from 0 to end, 4.2BSD newfs it bsdlabel -B and put everything in one partition. make heavy use of tmpfs, make sure noatime is put in fstab to limit writes to pendrive. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:45:17 -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote: Does a USB flash drive also work as a giant floppy, no partitions? Can you make a flash drive bootable when nonpartitioned and formatted that way? Yes, that's exactly what my advice was aiming to, but let's try to keep the terminology clean: You cannot do without partitions. A partition carries a file system. You _can_ do without slices. A slice holds one or more partitions. A slice is a DOS primary partition. Omitting it is called dedicated mode. There may be some circumstances where a dedicated disk doesn't boot. Personally I haven't met one, but it's still possible due to BIOSes expecting MS-DOS-alike structures. For the file system side, it's just a matter of having created one partition covering the whole disk, newfs and tunefs it, and install the boot code. Wojciech Puchar did already explain how this works and which tools are involved. However, there _is_ a way to make a giant floppy without a file system (as you said without partitions, and I'll take that literally): You can use tar, the universal file system that isn't a file system to write data to the USB stick. Writing stuff: # tar cf /dev/da0 /my/files Reading stuff: # tar xf /dev/da0 This works, but it may appear that no other system can read it. If you consider using it for FreeBSD only, no problem. The big advantage: You don't need to mount and umount the stick. I'm assume _that_ construct cannot be booted. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:49:30 +0200 (CEST), Wojciech Puchar wrote: Magdeburg, Germany I have used gpart to partition a USB flash drive into FreeBSD boot partition, root partition and swap partition. making swap partition on USB pendrive is at least stupid. if you won't swap at all - wasted space. If you will it would be so slow and wear USB pendrive so quickly that you certainly don't want this. bsdlabel -w device bsdabel -e device and make a partition start from 0 to end, 4.2BSD newfs it bsdlabel -B and put everything in one partition. make heavy use of tmpfs, make sure noatime is put in fstab to limit writes to pendrive. An addition: You can label the a partition (e. g. /dev/da0a) or use its UFSID in /etc/fstab, so you don't depend on the exact device name, which in turn depends on the detection order of mass storage which is hard to predict. I'd like to recommend reading for details: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html and http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-glabel.html -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:36:36 -0600 (MDT) Warren Block articulated: On Sat, 7 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 Thanks Warren, you win the prize for the most detailed answer. Polytropon gave me the easiest answer if I just want to use the drive as a simple storage device; however, if at some point I actually want to go beyond that your answer is what I would require. Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. Perhaps I was just not looking hard enough. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. -- Carmel ✌ carmel...@hotmail.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 07:41:59 -0400, Carmel wrote: Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. Why not put the commands into a text file locally? Try _that_ with a GUI. :-) I'm almost sure KDE or Gnome offer means to initialize mass storage, but because those seem to be quite Linux-centric, it's possible FreeBSD's system tools won't be utilized. So with using the commands provided by Warren, you will be fine every time. If you practice them regularly, you will remember them, and if you do so, you'll surely write a script that allows you to automate the task so you can forget the commands again. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 Thanks Warren, you win the prize for the most detailed answer. Polytropon gave me the easiest answer if I just want to use the drive as a simple storage device; however, if at some point I actually want to go beyond that your answer is what I would require. Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. Perhaps I was just not looking hard enough. FreeBSD sees no significant difference between a flash drive and a disk drive. They are treated the same. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. bsdinstall(8) has a curses partition editor. There is probably a trick needed to use that outside of an install context. I find gpart easier.___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. because there is no need to. For freebsd it is just a storage device. for FreeBSD only i recommend using bsdlabel, not gpart, for multiOS using fdisk. it is simpler and boot0cfg allows you to add boot selector, so you can make multisystem pendrive, just as my triple-boot 16GB pendrive holding FreeBSD/i386, FreeBSD/amd64, lots of packages, DOS with lots of tools and windoze installers. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI not about purism but (lack of) usability. GUI interfaces never helps, only hides real things and prevent understanding anything. You maybe understand it, maybe not. Most people will not. GUI interfaces are actual a PROBLEM with today software. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
with using the commands provided by Warren, you will be fine every time. If you practice them regularly, you will remember them, and if you do so, you'll surely write a script that after doing man gpart he will understand it, so remembering is easy. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 14:16:31 +0200 (CEST), Wojciech Puchar wrote: Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI not about purism but (lack of) usability. GUI interfaces never helps, only hides real things and prevent understanding anything. You maybe understand it, maybe not. Most people will not. GUI interfaces are actual a PROBLEM with today software. The main problem here is that you have no efficient way of documentation. What do you want to do? Describe pictures? And as soon as the GUI changes (e. g. different toolkit version), things may change, not look the same anymore. Also GUIs seem to be limited, especially if you want to apply options that make better use of characteristics of a flash drive (compared to a regular hard disk). A GUI disk initializer would have to take _every_ possibility into mind, everything that might be specific to the OS it runs on (as for example Linux differs from FreeBSD filesystem-wise), making things much more complicated than they need to. With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. I admit that they might be confusing for people who do not want to read, learn and practice. That's okay. Those should use GUI tools and live with the (limited) set of selections they are presented. As there is no real distinction between user and administrator anymore, this is something we need to live with. That being said, CLI tools offer the easier interface to the more advanced functionality and better flexibility, which is especially useful in the discussed case: initializing a USB flash drive that might need different options than what you could default to for a regular disk drive. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 13:30, Polytropon wrote: With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. How do you format a FAT32 partition? newfs won't work. Is it newfs_vfat, newfs_fat32, newfs_msdos etc.? And how do you specify you want FAT32 instead of FAT12 or FAT16? With a good GUI tool like diskmgmt.msc in Windows 2008 you simply right-click the partition and click New Volume to create a new partition, or Format to format it - and then follow the prompts. Of course using diskpart is faster if you know the commands and parameters, but for an ordinary user adding a new disk maybe once a year it's most likely more efficient to just use the GUI. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:27:05 +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 13:30, Polytropon wrote: With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. How do you format a FAT32 partition? newfs won't work. Is it newfs_vfat, newfs_fat32, newfs_msdos etc.? And how do you specify you want FAT32 instead of FAT12 or FAT16? In such cases, you use the _proper_ CLI tools for that job. As I said, those are typically specific to the file system one wants to use, and depending on the file system design, there may be options that are individual to those tools. For every fs-related task, there is a system-level tool that does the job. With a good GUI tool like diskmgmt.msc in Windows 2008 you simply right-click the partition and click New Volume to create a new partition, or Format to format it - and then follow the prompts. And of course you cannot create UFS partitions that way. :-) I still remember the initalize disk function from the original Amiga or Atari ST graphical interfaces. They were bound to those systems and their supported file systems. Intending to have something similar (a GUI) for UNIX and Linux would be possible, but very complicated under the hood, and it would be even more complicated to make all that power utilizable to a novice user. In that specific case, reasonable defaults would have to be provided, which typically fail in edge cases. This is where you use the power of CLI. Another advantage: It's less interactive, giving you potential for automating tasks. Follow the prompts might even be too complicated for some kinds of users. :-) Of course using diskpart is faster if you know the commands and parameters, but for an ordinary user adding a new disk maybe once a year it's most likely more efficient to just use the GUI. If the GUI takes the considerations about file system and media type (and their implications) into mind -- no problem. Sadly, I don't know of a tool yet that exactly works that way. Especially in trial error scenarios the CLI is simpler in use. For example, you compose a newfs command. Then you apply it. Not happy with the result? Recall the command from the command line history, change the parameters you want, and then try again. It's surely harder to do that within a GUI. :-) On the other hand, a proper tool would efficiently visualize the content of a disk, showing how slices and partitions are laid out and what options they have. This is a real benefit in testing scenarios where you need a quick overview of the status quo. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 422, Issue 10, Message: 29 On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 07:41:59 -0400 Carmel carmel...@hotmail.com wrote: On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:36:36 -0600 (MDT) Warren Block articulated: On Sat, 7 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 Thanks Warren, you win the prize for the most detailed answer. Polytropon gave me the easiest answer if I just want to use the drive as a simple storage device; however, if at some point I actually want to go beyond that your answer is what I would require. Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. Perhaps I was just not looking hard enough. In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. Well one of the reasons I'm replying to this is to keep a copy of Warren's recipe handy :) Another is to point out that rumours of the death of MBR partitioning, especially on small disks, are premature. I know your question specified gpart, but the easiest way I know of to put UFS filesystems on flash drives is to use sade(8), incorporating the fdisk bsdlabel newfs functions from sysinstall .. it still works as well as ever, however old-fashioned or deprecated some may call it. sade's GUI at the curses level :) and does all the heavy maths for you, both for slicing the disk and partitioning the slice(s). As mentioned in boot0cfg(8), you have to set # sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 before sade (or anything) can write to any GEOM disk's boot sectors. Remember to reset it to 0 later. You might even like to put a small msdosfs slice first, so you can use some of that stick to transfer files between UFS and DOS systems. And yes you can multiboot from a memstick if you (or sade) put boot0 on it, assuming your computer supports booting from USB drives. I don't know what the gpart equivalent of boot0 is, if there is one yet? Last I heard, seemed you had to use Linux tools to multiboot GPT disks. There was some muttering about updating sade to handle GPT too .. that would be very welcome, maybe restoring some of the lost functionality from sysinstall/sade back into bsdinstall, both for GPT and MBR systems. cheers, Ian___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
I know your question specified gpart, but the easiest way I know of to put UFS filesystems on flash drives is to use sade(8), incorporating the the easiest way to put UFS filesystem on flash drives is to ... put UFS filesystem using newfs command. You DO NOT NEED any partitioning. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 16:06, Ian Smith wrote: In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. The more expensive disks of course support TRIM so you'd want to pass -t to newfs to enable it. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. The more expensive disks of course support TRIM so you'd want to pass -t to newfs to enable it. can you give me an example of pendrive that supports TRIM? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 21:51, Wojciech Puchar wrote: can you give me an example of pendrive that supports TRIM? LaCie FastKey (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/usb-3.0-thumb-drive-flash-drive,review-32174-5.html). -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
seems like SSD style controller+USB 3.0 bridge. sizes suggest this. thanks. On Sun, 8 Jul 2012, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 21:51, Wojciech Puchar wrote: can you give me an example of pendrive that supports TRIM? LaCie FastKey (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/usb-3.0-thumb-drive-flash-drive,review-32174-5.html). -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:45:17 -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote: Does a USB flash drive also work as a giant floppy, no partitions? Can you make a flash drive bootable when nonpartitioned and formatted that way? Polytropon responded: Yes, that's exactly what my advice was aiming to, but let's try to keep the terminology clean: You cannot do without partitions. A partition carries a file system. You _can_ do without slices. A slice holds one or more partitions. A slice is a DOS primary partition. Omitting it is called dedicated mode. There may be some circumstances where a dedicated disk doesn't boot. Personally I haven't met one, but it's still possible due to BIOSes expecting MS-DOS-alike structures. For the file system side, it's just a matter of having created one partition covering the whole disk, newfs and tunefs it, and install the boot code. Wojciech Puchar did already explain how this works and which tools are involved. However, there _is_ a way to make a giant floppy without a file system (as you said without partitions, and I'll take that literally): You can use tar, the universal file system that isn't a file system to write data to the USB stick. Writing stuff: # tar cf /dev/da0 /my/files Reading stuff: # tar xf /dev/da0 This works, but it may appear that no other system can read it. If you consider using it for FreeBSD only, no problem. The big advantage: You don't need to mount and umount the stick. I'm assume _that_ construct cannot be booted. You mean the non-subdivided 1.44 MB or other capacity of a floppy is called a partition? Same question for CDs? One does not usually think of something that can't be created by subdividing as a partition. Also, a file system can be contained in an image file. Or is this a virtual partition? Might # tar xf /dev/da0 work in other BSDs or even other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux, using the appropriate device name where applicable in place of da0? While that particular construst could probably not be booted, it is possible to boot from a floppy or image file that does not contain a file system. Some of the disk images on the System Rescue CD (sysresccd.org) are not viewable/mountable as file systems. Tom ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, Jul 08, 2012 at 02:27:05PM +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 13:30, Polytropon wrote: With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. How do you format a FAT32 partition? You don't. You wipe the FAT32 with fdisk and make a FreeBSD slice on it. Then you can bsdlabel it with one partition and newfs it. Or you can use the gpart tools with I am not yet familiar. But, in any case, the FAT32 is irrelevant. You just overwrite that with the FreeBSD stuff. If you have a FAT32 on it and if you want to use it as a FAT32, then you leave the FAT32 alone and just mount the thing as type msdosfs. Make a mount point for it. I commonly use /stick Add something like the following in your /etc/fstab /dev/da2s1 /stick msdosfs rw,noauto 0 0 and then do #mount /stick on the command line. You will have to figure out the correct /dev/... address for it. Generally you dan find the info in dmesg. jerry newfs won't work. Is it newfs_vfat, newfs_fat32, newfs_msdos etc.? And how do you specify you want FAT32 instead of FAT12 or FAT16? With a good GUI tool like diskmgmt.msc in Windows 2008 you simply right-click the partition and click New Volume to create a new partition, or Format to format it - and then follow the prompts. Of course using diskpart is faster if you know the commands and parameters, but for an ordinary user adding a new disk maybe once a year it's most likely more efficient to just use the GUI. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
You don't. You wipe the FAT32 with fdisk and make a FreeBSD slice on it. Then you can bsdlabel it with one partition and newfs it. Or you can repeat 100 times more that you have to make fdisk and bsdlabel. you don't, and it doesn't make sense ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
file system (as you said without partitions, and I'll take that literally): You can use tar, the universal file system that isn't a file system to write data to the USB stick. which is best in USB pendrive wear and speed point of view. pendrive's flash translation layers are just awful, only linear writes works well. Writing stuff: # tar cf /dev/da0 /my/files i would recomment tar -b 128 -cf /dev/da0 /my/files Might # tar xf /dev/da0 work in other BSDs or even other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux, using the appropriate device name where applicable in place of da0? yes it will run fine under linux, openbsd, netbsd, slowlaris etc. While that particular construst could probably not be booted, it is possible to boot from a floppy or image file that does not contain a file system. If you need bootable pendrive then you have to use disklabel and make filesystem. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Format a USB flash drive using gpart
This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. -- Carmel ✌ carmel...@hotmail.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 13:15:10 -0400, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. In that case, screw slices and partitions 'n stuff. :-) # newfs /dev/da0 This is all you need (see man newfs and man tunefs for options you might need to optimize utilization, and check best fitting options for /etc/fstab, e. g. noatime if you are not going to need it). -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 13:15:10 -0400, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. In that case, screw slices and partitions 'n stuff. :-) # newfs /dev/da0 This is all you need (see man newfs and man tunefs for options you might need to optimize utilization, and check best fitting options for /etc/fstab, e. g. noatime if you are not going to need it). Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany I have used gpart to partition a USB flash drive into FreeBSD boot partition, root partition and swap partition. I ran newfs on the second (root) partition, even installed FreeBSD built from source, and made the flash drive bootable, both for amd64 and i386. Does a USB flash drive also work as a giant floppy, no partitions? Can you make a flash drive bootable when nonpartitioned and formatted that way? Tom ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
