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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!math.fu-berlin.de!news.netmbx.de!Germany.EU.net!bs From: bs@Germany.EU.net (Bernard Steiner) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: HELP: wiped out my DOS partition Date: 13 Oct 1992 10:27:50 GMT Organization: EUnet Backbone, Dortmund, Germany Lines: 48 Distribution: world Message-ID: <1be8b6INN9pi@Germany.EU.net> References: <1992Oct5.150129.27179@unibi.uni-bielefeld.de> <1apomrINNi8c@uwm.edu> <16808@ksr.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: walhalla.germany.eu.net In article <16808@ksr.com>, dean@ksr.com (Dean Anderson) writes: > The PC BSD's should look at the dos partition table and create multiple > logical disk drives, one for each partition. I beg to differ. There is no such thing as a "dos partition table" on either of my drives :) > This has the following benefits: > 1. Doesn't change machine independent code. This makes it easier to > integrate future changes to BSD code, and contribute changes back to > Berkeley. Well, the code you propose *is* sort of machine-dependent, isn't it ? I mean, I don't have DOS. > 2. Makes it possible to mount Dos "drives". A dos vfs is needed. I recently re-compiled mtools to read the C: drive on some other machine. The only thing that you really need is yet another definition (disklabel) for all your DOS fdisk partitions. On a *HUGE* drive you may run into problems since the number of partitions on a drive is restricted to eight (if I recall correctly), and on your primary BSD drive at least (I imagine) the a,b,c and d partitions are pre-allocated (though only c and d are magic). This doesn't hold for a secondary drive where you are free to use a and b as you like. How about making dos vfs aware of the d "partition" only and telling each dosFS its offset and length ? > 3. Makes it possible to ignore that dos exists and use the whole drive > without a dos partition table. This is particularly attractive is you > have a large disk, because dos will not work happilly with disks of > greater than 1024 cylinders without a lot of egregious hacking which > ultimately hurts ufs performance. Huh ? As I said before, DOS doesn't exist, there's no dos partition table... But then I don't quite understand what you're getting at here. Cheers, Bernard -- Bernard Steiner, FB Informatik/IRB, Uni Dortmund, vox +49 231 755 2444 Postfach 500500, D-W-4600 Dortmund 50, Germany fax +49 231 755 2386 bs@Germany.EU.net ...!uunet!unido!bs *III And they gave it Instructions, but knew it not. } From The Book of Nome, *IV It is, they said, a Box with a Funny Voice. } Mezzanine v.III-IV