Hi all! :) BSD disklabel uses letters to specify different partitions, with some conventions, but I can not find information about them in NetBSD. One common scheme is:
Partition a: root partition, / Partition b: swap Partition c: NetBSD portion of disk (usually the whole NetBSD slice in the hard disk MBR partition table) Partition d: whole disk Partition e: custom partition, with custom mount point (e.g. /home) and so on. 1) Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_disklabel) states that: ``BSD disklabels traditionally contain 8 entries for describing partitions. [...] Some BSD variants have since increased this to 16 partitions''. Which is the case of NetBSD? 8, 16, another number, or a number depending on the port? For example, OpenBSD ``only supports up to a maximum of 15 partitions, ‘a’ through ‘p’, excluding ‘c’'' (from disklabel(5)). 2) In Section 2.2.2 of `The NetBSD Guide', a note states: (about “c” referring to the NetBSD portion of disk and “d” referring to the whole disk) ``The meaning of partitions “c” and “d” is typical of the amd64 port. On most other ports, “c” represents the whole disk'' and consequently “d” is the first letter available for custom partitions. What are the ports following the convention of amd64, and what instead the ports considering “c” as the whole disk? In OpenBSD ``the ‘c’ partition is'' [I guess, always] ``reserved for the entire physical disk'' (from disklabel(5)). 3) Again, from OpenBSD disklabel(5): ``By convention, the ‘a’ partition of the boot disk is the root partition, and the ‘b’ partition of the boot disk is the swap partition, but all other letters can be used in any order for any other partitions as desired''. As regards NetBSD: this use of ‘a’ and ‘b’ is mandatory? Or is it possible to arbitrarily change the letter assignments? (E.g. partition /home to ‘a’ and root partition and swap to ‘e’, ‘f’, ‘g’ ...) Any suggestion/information about this would be very useful. Thank you anyway, Rocky