Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
David O'Brien wrote: On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 06:58:52PM +0100, Ulrich Spoerlein wrote: First of all, the Partition Editor has the 'A' option to use all of the available HDD space. It creates a DOS-compatible slice (starting at sector 63 and ending on cylinder boundary). This is completely useless on servers and the help menu says that sysinstall will ask if it should create a DOS-compatible slice or not. However no such question is ever asked. It is NOT useless. Why do you think it is? Perhaps you don't relize that some BIOS's wont boot from a hard disk that isn't partitioned to agree with the specifications of the PeeCee. If you want to treat your PC as a Sun, don't -- buy a Sun, FreeBSD runs on that too. Hmmm, not a reason why it's useless, but certainly one case where it just plain doesn't work: I have some SCSI disks which my BIOS refuses to boot unless dangerously dedicated. Any ideas are welcome. They are all the same as this: da0: SEAGATE ST34502LW 0005 Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device da0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 8, 16bit), Tagged Queueing Enabled da0: 4340MB (924 512 byte sectors: 64H 32S/T 4340C) Ian ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 18:58:52, q (Ulrich Spoerlein) wrote about Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved: US First of all, the Partition Editor has the 'A' option to use all of the US available HDD space. It creates a DOS-compatible slice (starting at US sector 63 and ending on cylinder boundary). This is completely useless US on servers No, even on servers one may use only 6 data partitions or less, as to fit in one bsdlabel. US and the help menu says that sysinstall will ask if it should US create a DOS-compatible slice or not. However no such question is ever US asked. I think help page should be fixed, but not fdisk code. US Creating the slice manually, specifying the complete disk as 'size' will US also leave the start and end of the disk unpartitioned (again, no US question is ever asked). First track is leaved for compatibility with DOS-styled scheme. It is required for many BIOSes which want to determine provided geometry by reading PT. Some last part which can't fit in cylinder in declared geometry, rest unused. It is feature of DOS compatibility mode and there is no need to warn it. US Ok, then the solution would be to drop to a shell and run fdisk by hand. US However there is no fdisk/disklabel/newfs in that shell. Even 'ls' is US not found. Running the LiveCD will give you a working fdisk/disklabel US but the man-pages are not useable (manpath.config can't be found). US Succeding in sliceing/partitioning without man-pages will still require US to reboot sysinstall, because it doesn't re-read the partition/slice US table but uses the in-memory table instead (I didn't find an option to US re-read this information from disk) Does you say for 4.x or 5.x? Behavior you said is for 4.x. US Please consider this, right now sysinstall is a tool which can only be US used if you know all of it's bugs. IMHO even the OpenBSD installer is US sometimes more elegant than sysinstall. US Really brave souls should take a look at this list: US http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi?text=sysinstall sysinstall is ugly, but all you said for it doesn't matter, IMHO. -netch- ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 16:43:12, q (Ulrich Spoerlein) wrote about Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved: It is NOT useless. Why do you think it is? Perhaps you don't relize that some BIOS's wont boot from a hard disk that isn't partitioned to agree with the specifications of the PeeCee. If you want to treat your PC as a Sun, don't -- buy a Sun, FreeBSD runs on that too. US What exactly do you mean by PC Specification? I'm not trying to make a US dangerously dedicated disk. I just don't need a spare 63 sectors for US DOS-compatibility. And leaving the first 63 sectors untouched is a US DOS-ism, not a PC-ism. Well, dangerously dedicated is name of partitioning mode which doesn't leave one track for dos PT and MBR switcher. It's just name. If you doesn't like this name, rename it in your mind. US The BIOS' only job is to load the MBR (sector 0) which will then read US and check the partition table and load the first sector of the 'active' US partition into memory and pass execution to it. In real, BIOS can read master PT and even BPB on FAT to found which geometry (normal/ECHS/LBA-assist) should be reported. US Therefore I created a big partition from sector 1 to the last sector US with fdisk from the LiveCD. After writing the partition table I had to US reboot sysinstall because it didn't recognise the partition layout has US changed. So could someone be so kind to teach sysinstall a 'reset' US button which will re-read the partition table and the disklabel info? It should be done automatically unless there are opened/mounted partitions on this disk. If you don't see changes, check whether you really asked to write changes immediately. Otherwise, they are delayed until commit phase. US PS: I have a Sparcstation 20 and a b0rken Ultra1. None of them run FreeBSD. Do you consider this as a bug? -netch- ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
Ulrich Spoerlein wrote: On Tue, 28.10.2003 at 23:29:03 -0800, David O'Brien wrote: It is NOT useless. Why do you think it is? Perhaps you don't relize that some BIOS's wont boot from a hard disk that isn't partitioned to agree with the specifications of the PeeCee. If you want to treat your PC as a Sun, don't -- buy a Sun, FreeBSD runs on that too. What exactly do you mean by PC Specification? I'm not trying to make a dangerously dedicated disk. I just don't need a spare 63 sectors for DOS-compatibility. And leaving the first 63 sectors untouched is a DOS-ism, not a PC-ism. Ironically, the best reference for FDISK-style layout of partition tables, use of the fields in the FDISK partition table structure, and general reference on checksums, 0xAA55, and the rest that I have ever found is the PReP specification, chapter 6. That's Power PC Reference Platform Specification, in case you were wondering; it's a Motorolla document intended for use on Motorolla hardware. Some DEC (Compaq? Hewlett-Compaqard?) Alpha firmware has the same requirement that PReP has in this regard. So do most OSs that run on x86 hardware, even when they are run on non-x86 hardware (Solaris, et. al.). I agree that the code could be cleaned up, but the layout on the disk is pretty intentional. -- Terry ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 06:58:52PM +0100, Ulrich Spoerlein wrote: First of all, the Partition Editor has the 'A' option to use all of the available HDD space. It creates a DOS-compatible slice (starting at sector 63 and ending on cylinder boundary). This is completely useless on servers and the help menu says that sysinstall will ask if it should create a DOS-compatible slice or not. However no such question is ever asked. It is NOT useless. Why do you think it is? Perhaps you don't relize that some BIOS's wont boot from a hard disk that isn't partitioned to agree with the specifications of the PeeCee. If you want to treat your PC as a Sun, don't -- buy a Sun, FreeBSD runs on that too. Ok, then the solution would be to drop to a shell and run fdisk by hand. However there is no fdisk/disklabel/newfs in that shell. Even 'ls' is not found. Running the LiveCD will give you a working fdisk/disklabel but the man-pages are not useable (manpath.config can't be found). You're going to a lot of trouble just to save %1 of the available disk space... ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
On 28 Oct 2003, David O'Brien wrote: It is NOT useless. Why do you think it is? Perhaps you don't relize that some BIOS's wont boot from a hard disk that isn't partitioned to agree with the specifications of the PeeCee. If you want to treat your PC as a Sun, don't -- buy a Sun, FreeBSD runs on that too. This is true. And while I disagree with some of the initial complaints, I do think that fdisk/disklabel in sysinstall need to be improved upon. They do not handle multi-terabyte disk arrays properly at all (unless something has changed since 5.1-RELEASE) and as array sizes increase, it seems like this would be an issue to address lest people think that FreeBSD is not geared toward middle range server duties, which it most obviously handles exceptionally well. :) Having said that, I had to reflect a few seconds myself to figure out how to actually tell fdisk to go into dangerously dedicated mode, but it wasn't entirely impossible. It just wasn't entirely intuitive (although at the moment I cannot imagine why it wouldn't have been!). It's been awhile since I used it admittedly. If you want truly user unfriendly, try using fdisk/disklabel post installation, which both DO handle large slice/partition sizes properly, and through which I finally realized my 1638492118Kb RAID-5 partition. :) -- Mark Nippere-contacts: Computing and Information Services [EMAIL PROTECTED] Texas AM Universityhttp://ops.tamu.edu/nipsy/ College Station, TX 77843-3142 AIM/Yahoo: texasnipsy ICQ: 66971617 (979)575-3193 MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- GG/IT d- s++:+ a- C++$ UBL+++$ P---+++ L+++$ E--- W++ N+ o K++ w(---) O++ M V(--) PS+++(+) PE(--) Y+ PGP++(+) t 5 X R tv b+++ DI+(++) D+ G e h r++ y+(**) --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- ---begin random quote of the moment--- If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. -- one of the Proverbs of Hell from William Blake's _The Marraige of Heaven and Hell_, 1789-1790 end random quote of the moment ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:12:17 -0600, Mark Nipper [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: initial complaints, I do think that fdisk/disklabel in sysinstall need to be improved upon. They do not handle multi-terabyte disk arrays properly at all You should probably use GPT on multi-terabyte disk arrays. -GAWollman ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
On 29 Oct 2003, Garrett Wollman wrote: On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:12:17 -0600, Mark Nipper [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: initial complaints, I do think that fdisk/disklabel in sysinstall need to be improved upon. They do not handle multi-terabyte disk arrays properly at all You should probably use GPT on multi-terabyte disk arrays. At first, I didn't even know what you were saying. :) Then, I remember seeing something about this when I was having my problems, and upon refreshing my memory a second ago, I'm now on the same page! :) But, I don't know too much about the new partitioning scheme you mention (GUID Partition Table, right?), especially with regards to the normal PC BIOS actually recognizing it, etc. I assume you could just use the MBR and do whatever you want with the rest of the drive. Anyway, do you you know of any good links describing the reasons to use it and generally how to use it as well as compatibility issues? I see a few things on google about patches and the like, but know real thorough description of all of this, even just under FreeBSD. -- Mark Nippere-contacts: Computing and Information Services [EMAIL PROTECTED] Texas AM Universityhttp://ops.tamu.edu/nipsy/ College Station, TX 77843-3142 AIM/Yahoo: texasnipsy ICQ: 66971617 (979)575-3193 MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- GG/IT d- s++:+ a- C++$ UBL+++$ P---+++ L+++$ E--- W++ N+ o K++ w(---) O++ M V(--) PS+++(+) PE(--) Y+ PGP++(+) t 5 X R tv b+++ DI+(++) D+ G e h r++ y+(**) --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- ---begin random quote of the moment--- Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. -- Robert Frost, _New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes_, 1923 end random quote of the moment ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
Ulrich Spoerlein wrote: Ok, this is perhaps pretty low priority to all of you (even to me), but since I installed 2 new 5.1 systems this week I cursed sysinstall several times! First of all, the Partition Editor has the 'A' option to use all of the available HDD space. It creates a DOS-compatible slice (starting at sector 63 and ending on cylinder boundary). This is completely useless on servers and the help menu says that sysinstall will ask if it should create a DOS-compatible slice or not. However no such question is ever asked. Use F for DD mode. This is different than A and will ask the question you expected. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved
On Monday 27 October 2003 04:28, Ulrich Spoerlein wrote: First of all, the Partition Editor has the 'A' option to use all of the available HDD space. It creates a DOS-compatible slice (starting at sector 63 and ending on cylinder boundary). This is completely useless on servers and the help menu says that sysinstall will ask if it should create a DOS-compatible slice or not. However no such question is ever asked. Err.. What's wrong with it? Surely DOS compatible is fine?! The documentation is probably out of date, but it still works and partitions your disk just fine. (It partitions mine just fine for a huge variety of machines) -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 9A8C 569F 685A D928 5140 AE4B 319B 41F4 5D17 FDD5 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
