*BSD News Article 11251


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From: blymn@awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: [386bsd] partitioning-question
Date: 18 Feb 93 18:04:36
Organization: AWA Defence Industries
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Message-ID: <BLYMN.93Feb18180436@mallee.awadi.com.au>
References: <C2ED32.GE@malihh.hanse.de>
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In-reply-to: clu@malihh.hanse.de's message of Sat, 13 Feb 1993 17:11:23 GMT

>>>>> On Sat, 13 Feb 1993 17:11:23 GMT, clu@malihh.hanse.de (Carsten Lutz) said:

C> 1. What is the 5MB-partition b used for ? Must I keep it ? ( And what do the
C>    asterisks after the Cyl.-numbers mean ? )

the b partition is your swap, I suspect that if you have no swap the
machine will not boot (at least suns will not).  The asterisks
indicate that the partition does not start/end on a cylinder boundary,
traditional wisdom says that partitions must start on a cylinder
boundary, this limitation may have been removed (I think it has) but
still putting your partitions on a cylinder boundary would be a good
idea.

C> 2. Why must there be one partition ( c ) "surrounding" all space used
C>    by 386bsd ?

Not 100% sure about this one, I think it is more tradition so that you
can dump the *entire* device to tape using dd, just speculation
though.

C> I want to repartition my disk to use Cyl.0-106 as swapspace. Two questions
C> again:
C> 1. Can I use offset 0 for my swappartition or will this override my bootblock ?
C> 2. I build the following disktab entry ( only partition-info ): 
C> 	:pa#339264:oa#65056:ta=4.2BSD: \
C>         :pb#10000:ob#404764:tb=unused: \
C>         :pc#414263:oc#1:tc=unused: \
C>         :pd#65055:od#1:td=swap

C> Will this work ? ( swap-partition _before_ 4.2BSD-partition )


You must not use cylinder 0 for a "raw" partition like swap because
the partition and boot info are stored in cylinder 0.  If you want to
make the swap the first partition then start the partition at 1 not 0,
leave a one cylinder partition to hold the boot and partitioning info.

--
Brett Lymn