5.1-RELEASE with swap partion as first partion is bad

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jun 13), JacobRhoden said:
> I dont know if this has always been the case, but someone in our
> office (new to FreeBSD) was trying to install 5.1 with the swap
> partion first. He tried very hard for hours, but he couldnt get it to
> work (even after I told him try having the swap partion second
> instead). Is it documented that having the swap partion first is bad,
> or is it simply a bug (errata?).

Having the swap partition being partition 'a' is bad.  The BSD stage2
bootblocks need /boot/loader to be in partition 'a' (see the boot(8)
manpage).  Swap should always be 'b'.

Having said that, there is no reason partition 'b' has to be physically
after partition 'a'.  All my systems that have a single filesystem have
swap starting at cylinder 0, and the filesystem comes after it.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com