9-beta1 installer - partition editor

[Freddie Cash]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 12 September 2011 18:28, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>
> wrote:
>
> > This was resolved earlier -- you cannot install onto just MBR without a
> > bsdlabel. This has never been supported, and worked only by accident
> before.
> > *As it tells you* you need to create sub-partitions.
>
> I'll again note that it should be supported because a) there's no
> technical reason not to and b) this is how every other OS works. But
> I'll leave it at that, maybe the users won't mind.
>

Well, if you look at the history of BSD Unix and the port to the PC, you'll
notice that every other PC-based OS does partitioning wrong.  :)

Unix partitioning has always been this way:
  - create partition on disk for OS
  - create sub-partitions for filesystems

And it was that way for many years (decades?) before the PC came along.
 IBM/MS decided to ignore the huge history of computers and partitioning
that came before, instead coming up with the lame-brained "primary
partition" MBR scheme with a limit of 4 partitions.  Later extending that
with the even more lame-brained concept of an "extended partition" and
"logical partitions".

Don't blame FreeBSD (a member of the BSD family) for following the BSD Unix
tradition for partitioning.

Thankfully, the GPT partitioning standard removes the distinction between
"primary", "extended", and "logical" partitions.  Now, a partition is a
partition is a partition.  It's just too bad that they removed the concept
of sub-partitions (bsdlabels) as a multi-boot system now has a giant, messy,
table full of top-level partitions, with each OS jumbled together (but, it's
much easier to label them all to make it easier to manage).  :(


-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com