*BSD News Article 62094


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: SCSI problems performing writes to FAST SCSI-2 drives
Date: 23 Feb 1996 21:16:21 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Message-ID: <4glar5$47c@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <4fqnbb$f7v@viking.ucsalf.ac.uk> <4fr9rr$t4i@atlas.uniserve.com> <DMu12y.ApB@flatlin.ka.sub.org> <4gd0qq$586@plato.ucsalf.ac.uk> <4gfcoq$k4j@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> <4gi0a2$2pt@plato.ucsalf.ac.uk>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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mark@plato.ucsalf.ac.uk (Mark Powell) writes:

> Ahh, I guessed this might be how it worked, from the presence of the
> 'entire disk' option, but I didn't realise the partition could be
> split in the labeller. I've upgraded this machine from Dell SVR4
> which used same scheme, but this wasn't clear with FreeBSD.

I think most other Unices do it this way.  (Known exceptions: Linux,
and i think Minix.)  This is natural considering the history of Unix,
where it usually lived on a disk of its own, hence it needs to
subpartition it.  This was true even in 386BSD 0.0, the first simple
ability to share the disk with messy DOS appeared in 386BSD 0.1.

(The ``dangerously dedicated'' option basically gives you the Unix
feel back.  It can save you a lot of headaches if you are never
consider running anything else than BSD on your machine.  You are
freed of all this weird geometry considerations then.)

> Well that's what I get for never reading
> the docs. 

Yup.

> However, I don't think I should of had the trouble I did? I think
> SCSI errors when partitioning a disk is a bug.

It's certainly a bug.  See my reply to your mail.
-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)