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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!netcom.net.uk!nntpfeed.doc.ic.ac.uk!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!njl2!long From: long@njl2.materials.ox.ac.uk (Neil J Long) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: More partitions than default devices? Date: 22 Apr 1997 11:33:38 GMT Organization: Department of Materials, University of Oxford Lines: 33 Message-ID: <5ji7mi$dbj@news.ox.ac.uk> References: <5jap4r$32@news.ox.ac.uk> <335C09FE.10@OntheNet.com.au> Reply-To: neil.long@materials.oxford.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: njl2.materials.ox.ac.uk Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39515 Just to clarify - I freed up a partition and played around a bit. The FreeBSD 'fdisk' is used much as in the DOS case - create disk partitions which are referred to as 'slices' within FreeBSD. A slice is a better description of what happens in practice - slices as in DOS C:, D:, etc (for those with long memories of DOS 3.x and the 32M limit, euggh!). On each slice 'disklabel' can be used (e.g. within the sysinstall tool) to create FreeBSD partitions (up to 8). So with 4 DOS-style partitions one could have 32 FreeBSD filesystems or swap partitions. i.e for a scsi disk sd0 fdisk can be used to generate 4 'disks' or slices sd0s1, sd0s2, sd0s3, sd0s4 each of these can then be divided up for use as filesystems or swap sd0s1a, sd0s1b, sd0s1c, sd0s1d, sd0s1e, sd0s1f, sd0s1g, sd0s1h I kept getting confused with the use of 'partitions' in both the DOS sense and then the FreeBSD sense having become used to other OS's where the initial 'fdisk' stage is irrelevant, I guess DOS is still there to haunt me. Regards Neil -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Neil J Long, Department of Materials, University of Oxford * Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PH, UK * EMail: Neil.Long@materials.oxford.ac.uk * Tel: +44 (0)1865-273678 Fax: +44 (0)1865-273789