Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
At 1:43 AM -0400 7/21/01, Garance A Drosihn wrote: [I'm not sure I made this obvious in my previous message, but these suggestions were meant for the situation where the user is doing a single install where they are spraying freebsd slices across multiple partitions -- as was in the case in the example I gave] I meant spraying freebsd PARTITIONS across multiple dos-style SLICES. I keep getting those two terms mixed up... -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 09:27:26PM -0700, David O'Brien wrote: On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 05:29:10PM -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote: Anyway, the above is a long-winded justification for the following suggestions: 1) if disklabel has already been told about '/', then it should not try and reserve partition 'a' of OTHER SLICES to also be '/'. The first partition created in those other slices should just be labelled partition 'a'. I don't want my data partition in say sd0s4 to be `a'. `a' implies root. So your suggestion will irritate some. Like me (if that counts ;-) 2) similarly, if it already has swap space defined, then it should not try to reserve partition 'b' of other slices to be swap. The second partition defined in those other slices should be labelled partition 'b'. What is wrong with having more than one slice with swap in it? Nothing. On the same disk it does not make too much sense, but it should not be illegal. 4) never reserve 'a' or 'b'. Always create partitions in the order people typed them in, except that WHEN someone says they want to create '/', THEN both move that partition to the front of the slice and name it 'a' (renaming other partitions as needed). NO! Many want to put swap at the beginning of the disk as that is the fastest part of the disk. The i386 has no problems booting from a People optimising the speed of the swap device are in a state of sin anyway. They should go out and buy some more memory to make their working set fit in core. [I know.. this is taking shortcuts. ] partition that is not located at the beginning of the disk(slice). The problem with the Alpha is people try the same trick, but it does not work. No.. -- | / o / / _ Arnhem, The Netherlands email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |/|/ / / /( (_) Bulte Youth is not a time in life, it is a state of mind To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 05:29:10PM -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote: Now, remember that during the boot-up process, the boot0 code requires that the partition to boot from be the first partition in the slice. The boot1 code assumes that the partition to boot from is labelled partition a. So, that partition which I will want to be / for release 5 needs to be both the first partition in the slice, and it needs to be labelled partition a. That is not true. You can put `b' at the beginning of the slice (what I think you mean by first partition), followed by `a' and the result boots just fine. [this is for i386 only!, this is not true for the Alpha] Why does disklabel make it partition e? Because it knows that it should use partition a for the partition which will be mounted as /. You did a lot of extra work to undo this. Just let sysinstall make it `e' and do your normal install. Then boot into your 4.3 and run disklabel da0s3 (or ad0s3). Go to the `e' and change it to `a' and save the label. Edit /etc/fstab and change the da0s3e to da0s3a. Or better yet, don't create anything within the da0s3 slice -- leave that to when you install -current in that slice. See my other email I just sent for instructions around the next problem sysinstall will give you. Anyway, the above is a long-winded justification for the following suggestions: 1) if disklabel has already been told about '/', then it should not try and reserve partition 'a' of OTHER SLICES to also be '/'. The first partition created in those other slices should just be labelled partition 'a'. I don't want my data partition in say sd0s4 to be `a'. `a' implies root. So your suggestion will irritate some. 2) similarly, if it already has swap space defined, then it should not try to reserve partition 'b' of other slices to be swap. The second partition defined in those other slices should be labelled partition 'b'. What is wrong with having more than one slice with swap in it? Nothing. Of course I don't really know what you mean by second partition defined. Sysinstall orders the location of the [BSD] partitions within the slice in the order you create the [BSD] partitions. Sysinstall also knows that swap is always `b' and root is always `a'. Sysinstall skips `d' because `d' used to mean the entire disk in pre-2.2.6. (`d' would behave how others coming from non-PC Unixes would expect `c' to behave) So you'll have to change your wording to be a little more exact for others to follow your proposal. Thinking about what people said about alpha installs, perhaps the following is another strategy disklabel could take. On the other hand, this may cause as many problems as it tries to solve. 4) never reserve 'a' or 'b'. Always create partitions in the order people typed them in, except that WHEN someone says they want to create '/', THEN both move that partition to the front of the slice and name it 'a' (renaming other partitions as needed). NO! Many want to put swap at the beginning of the disk as that is the fastest part of the disk. The i386 has no problems booting from a partition that is not located at the beginning of the disk(slice). The problem with the Alpha is people try the same trick, but it does not work. -- -- David ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
At 9:27 PM -0700 7/20/01, David O'Brien wrote:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 05:29:10PM -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
Now, remember that during the boot-up process, the boot0 code requires
that the partition to boot from be the first partition in the slice.
The boot1 code assumes that the partition to boot from is labelled
partition a. So, that partition which I will want to be / for
release 5 needs to be both the first partition in the slice, and it
needs to be labelled partition a.
That is not true. You can put `b' at the beginning of the slice (what
I think you mean by first partition), followed by `a' and the result
boots just fine. [this is for i386 only!, this is not true for the Alpha]
Oh. But that is only an option for the swap partition, not some other
UFS partition? Right? I'm still a little fuzzy on how these parts fit
together. So boot0 just looks for the first UFS partition in the slice
you selected, and assumes it is root?
Why does disklabel make it partition e? Because it knows that it
should use partition a for the partition which will be mounted
as /.
You did a lot of extra work to undo this. Just let sysinstall make
it `e' and do your normal install. Then boot into your 4.3 and run
disklabel da0s3 (or ad0s3). Go to the `e' and change it to `a' and
save the label. Edit /etc/fstab and change the da0s3e to da0s3a.
Yeah. Eventually I figured that out. I am not one to casually run
disklabel to change partition names on an already-running system (in
fact, this was the first time I have ever run disklabel directly).
Or better yet, don't create anything within the da0s3 slice -- leave that
to when you install -current in that slice. See my other email I just
sent for instructions around the next problem sysinstall will give you.
I needed to create partitions in both slices for stable, due to the
way I wanted to set things up. And I intended to install 4.3, update
to stable, copy the 4.3-specific {/,/var,/usr} to the /x5 equivalent
partitions (if you remember my naming scheme), and then update THAT
to turn it into current. So, I did really want stable to come up with
all of the partitions (both stable and current) that I defined.
Anyway, the above is a long-winded justification for the following
suggestions:
1) if disklabel has already been told about '/', then it
should not try and reserve partition 'a' of OTHER SLICES
to also be '/'. The first partition created in those
other slices should just be labelled partition 'a'.
I don't want my data partition in say sd0s4 to be `a'. `a' implies
root. So your suggestion will irritate some.
But if you (meaning the user doing the install) are creating a
data partition in a second slice, doesn't that pretty much imply
that it can't possibly be root?[note that I don't have a long
history of formatting unix partitions, so it wouldn't surprise me
if I am suggesting things which seem weird to people with a longer
history in bsd's].
[I'm not sure I made this obvious in my previous message, but these
suggestions were meant for the situation where the user is doing a
single install where they are spraying freebsd slices across multiple
partitions -- as was in the case in the example I gave]
In any case, sysinstall already will create 'a' partitions which
are not root, if you just ask it to create enough of them that
it has run out of letters. Why should I care if it irritates
some people if I what to use partition 'a' on a second slice
as /home? It's my disk, it works, it does not break anything.
[or does it?]
2) similarly, if it already has swap space defined, then
it should not try to reserve partition 'b' of other
slices to be swap. The second partition defined in
those other slices should be labelled partition 'b'.
What is wrong with having more than one slice with swap in it?
Nothing.
Er, yeah. I do agree. I think I forgot some extra sentence in this
suggestion, because I meant that to sound more like an there should
be a way that a user could tell sysinstall, and not that sysinstall
should never reserve 'b' for swap. At the time I was writing this
I did mean to allow for swap partitions in multiple slices, although
in my specific case I (personally, on my disk) knew that I only wanted
one swap partition. I wanted disklabel to let me name things the way
I wanted, instead of the way it thinks is good for me.
Of course I don't really know what you mean by second partition
defined. Sysinstall orders the location of the [BSD] partitions within
the slice in the order you create the [BSD] partitions. Sysinstall also
knows that swap is always `b' and root is always `a'. Sysinstall skips
`d' because `d' used to mean the entire disk in pre-2.2.6. (`d' would
behave how others coming from non-PC Unixes would expect `c' to behave)
So you'll have to change your wording to be a little more exact for
others to follow your
RE: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
Dear All, The Alpha's root *must* be the first partition (starting at the begining of the disk). People often know how much swap they want, and take what is left for other things. So they allocate swap first. Sysinstall's disk editor gives no feedback on how it is going to lay out the disk. There have been numerious install failures reported to freebsd-alpha@ because of this. I've submitted a rather feeble patch (PR alpha/23064) that makes sysinstall whine when someone is found aiming at his/her foot. If someone would be so kind as to review/submit this patch. Kees Jan = You can't have everything. Where would you put it? [Steven Wright] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 05:47:26PM -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote: + Allow one to specify the partition letter, than assumeing `e'. + Allow one to specify the ordering of partitions that will be written. Alpha users keep getting bit in the ass because sysinstall orders the swap partition at the begining of the disk vs. after /. One cannot tell which order the partitions will be written to disk. Hmm. Is it a different program on Alpha than i386? Same. On i386, the order on the disk seems to always be the order they were created in disklabel (which might or might not match the order of the partition letters...). Correct. The Alpha's root *must* be the first partition (starting at the begining of the disk). People often know how much swap they want, and take what is left for other things. So they allocate swap first. Sysinstall's disk editor gives no feedback on how it is going to lay out the disk. There have been numerious install failures reported to freebsd-alpha@ because of this. On i386, I know know the program seems to want to futz with the partition letters based on the name you give to the partition, which is sometimes annoying. Agreed. -- -- David ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
coming from thread Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral... At 4:30 PM -0400 7/10/01, Bill Moran wrote: *sigh* this has gotten way off track somehow. Looking back, I'm probably primarily to blame. The fact is: *I* *AM* interested in replacing or helping out with an effort to replace/improve sysinstall. However, there are two critical things I must understand if I am to do anything truely productive along this line: 1. Should sysinstall be fixed or replaced. 2. What needs done to fix or improve sysinstall. Now, I've gotten several excellent suggestions with regard to #2. If any of my replies to these seem like arguments, then that's just a part of my inability to communicate, as what I'm trying to do is *understand* what exactly needs done. If I only change what *I* want, it might not be terribly useful overall (as can be seen by my divergence from other's opinions) You make an excellent point of this in your second paragraph below. What I was really interested in getting answered was #1, as it was suggested by Terry Lambert that sysinstall must go (don't remember his exact words) I have no desire to start repairing something if a complete replacement is in order. The fact of the matter is that I don't understand the problem enough to fix it. It may seem strange to people that I'm more interested in understanding this problem than in fixing problems that I already understand. Well, I always have been a little strange ... Personally, I would appreciate it if folks would *not* back off from this conversation, since I'm actually beginning to understand, thanks to the tireless efforts of many who already understand. I am inclined to say replace sysinstall, just because it has so many quirks in it's user-interface which have annoyed me. On the other hand, I do want something a lot like sysinstall, and maybe if enough of the little things got fixed up then I might not be so eager to have it completely replaced. Part of the install process is the disk-partitioning step, which is more of an issue with fdisk and disklabel than sysinstall. Every time I go to use those I end up hitting something I don't particularly like, although the specifics of what I dislike are different each time. Eventually I get it to do exactly what I want it to do, at which point I try to put the whole experience out of my mind... :-) The one (silly, trivial) thing that I *like* about Openbsd's disk-partitioning setup is that I say I want about 50 meg for this partition, and it automatically rounds up to the nearest even boundary. It figures out the next-largest number of sectors such that no disk space is wasted. Yes, I realize it's a 20-gig disk now, but it still annoys me when I see 800 sectors unusable for each partition I create. I like the recent change so the partition-size can be displayed in sectors vs Kilobytes vs Megabytes (we may soon have to add Gigabytes to that!). It would also be nice to have percentage as display option there. I create several different partitions, and inevitably I get to the end and realize some partition is too large or too small. What I'd like to do at that point is say just take partition x, and increase it by 20 meg, and have it move all the partitions after it to match that. Instead, I end up having to delete all the partitions down to the one I want to change, and then recreate them all. I very much like the recent change so you can turn on the softupdates flag for a partition when you are creating it. However, there is some kind of column-counting mistake there, such that if you are creating more than one columns-worth of partitions, then turning on the softupdates flag for a partition in the second column writes past column 80 on the screen (which is to say, it writes on the first character of the following row). I know there are other things which have annoyed me when I've gone to use the disk editor, but I'm afraid I have not written them down anywhere, and those are the only things that I remember off the top of my head. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
At 2:29 PM -0700 7/10/01, David O'Brien wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2001, Bill Moran wrote: Now, I've never used partition magic, but I (personally) find the FreeBSD partition program in sysinstall to be the easiest one I've ever used. What should be changed to make it easier? Maybe not easier but better: + Allow one to specify the partition letter, than assumeing `e'. + Allow one to specify the ordering of partitions that will be written. Alpha users keep getting bit in the ass because sysinstall orders the swap partition at the begining of the disk vs. after /. One cannot tell which order the partitions will be written to disk. Hmm. Is it a different program on Alpha than i386? On i386, the order on the disk seems to always be the order they were created in disklabel (which might or might not match the order of the partition letters...). On i386, I know know the program seems to want to futz with the partition letters based on the name you give to the partition, which is sometimes annoying. Ie, it wants the root partition to be partition 'a', and swap to be partition 'b', but there are times when that's not what *I* want (for one reason or another). I sometimes create partitions with the wrong name (such as '/') so I can get the partition letter I want, and then rename the partition after it has assigned the letter. It may just be the weird way I operate, in that I create multiple 'fdisk partitions' which will hold freebsd slices (so I can boot between freebsd-stable and freebsd-current). Or I'll use sysinstall to repartition one disk while up-and-running on a different disk. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel
From: Garance A Drosihn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Suggestions for sysinstall / disklabel Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:28:26 -0400 However, there is some kind of column-counting mistake there, such that if you are creating more than one columns-worth of partitions, then turning on the softupdates flag for a partition in the second column writes past column 80 on the screen (which is to say, it writes on the first character of the following row). This was fixed post-4.3. - jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
