Dangerously dedicated mode with FreeBSD 10.1
Warren Block
wblock at wonkity.com
Fri Nov 21 15:26:03 UTC 2014
On Fri, 21 Nov 2014, Rostislav Krasny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've a server with FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE that uses two phisical disks in
> a so called "dangerously dedicated mode". There is no other operating
> system and no plan to install anything else but FreeBSD. So in my case
> this is not dangerous mode at all.
>
> I want to upgrade it by installing FreeBSD 10.1 from scratch and I
> want to use the dedicated disk mode again. How could I do that?
>
> If I understand it right the new bsdinstall(8) doesn't support the
> dedicated disk mode, the old sysinstall(8) is already dead and the
> only solution is a manual disk partitioning from shell. The 2.6.5.
> Shell Mode Partitioning section of the Handbook is very terse about
> that.
If you are determined, it should be possible to select a bsdlabel-only
format with the Manual partitioning option in the menus, or enter Shell
mode on startup and create it with gpart or even bsdlabel. That said,
I can't think of any advantages of using a bare bsdlable at all. With
10.1, GPT is available, supports large disks, and is easily alignable.*
*: although it is reported that bsdinstall for 10.1 does not
automatically do 4K alignment. But at least there are advantages to
using it as a partition scheme.
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