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From: j@bonnie.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Adding New harddisk
Date: 14 Sep 1995 12:38:29 +0200
Organization: Private U**x site, Dresden.
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Message-ID: <4390n5$cum@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>
References: <4312dq$or7@raffles.technet.sg> <433fpa$494@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <436ga5$crb@raffles.technet.sg>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
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James Seng <jseng@technet.sg> wrote:
>So i have to write a disktab myself? (I was hoping i can get away with
>that...hmm..maybe i go steal the disktab from my BSDi <g>) How does
You only need to create one *entry*. For a modern SCSI disk,
basically all you need is the number of sectors it has (the `su' tag
in disktab), you can invent any `geometry' you want. And, you need an
idea how to partition it. Don't care for magic `cylinder boundaries'
etc., simply assign partitions by block counts.
>sysinstall do it anyway. You mention libdisk. Is there any function inside
>there which i can use to 'autodetect' the disk information?
The Makefile for libdisk contains an entry for a program called
`tst01'. It's basically providing you with the same facilities as
sysinstall's ``wizard'' mode.
>Ah..so fdisk is use for 'slicing'. The man pages say it is for msdos
>partitioning 8P
``slice'' and ``fdisk (aka. DOS) partition'' is the same term, while
``BSD partition'' is a different layer. (The latter stands in the
tradition of the word `partition' in the Unix world. There's
apparently a name clash since both camps claimed the term
`partition'.)
>Anway, thank for the info. Seem like adding a new disk after the
>installation is very complex. A little more automatication or
>a better disktab will help.
More automation? Jordan's goal for sysinstall. It should be runnable
as a sysadmin tool, too.
A better disktab? What do you want? First, there are 25 million
different disks in the world. Second, /etc/disktab should be named
/etc/disk_and_partition_tab correctly, and since there are at least
another 10000 different partitioning layouts per disk (not to mention
slices :-), the file would need 25 million * 10000 entries at least.
:-)
--
cheers, J"org private: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
http://www.sax.de/~joerg/
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)