Documentation and similar issues with 5.3

[Wilko Bulte]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 11:41:28AM -0500, William H. Magill wrote..
> As I'm learning FreeBSD after a long career with Ultrix/DU/Tru64, I am
> finding that A LOT of the documentation not only does not refer to 5.3,
> but is EXTREMELY PC oriented.
> 
> 1) Is there any Alpha oriented documentation?

Yes :)

See http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/hardware-alpha.html

It is also on the CD in txt format.

> 2) Does anybody have any descriptions of "rational" disk layouts for
>    4 or 9 gig drives? [Both boot and "other"]
>    ... especially since I have a "blue" SW shelf of "VW" drives.

You could use Auto from sysinstall for a start.  

> 2A) The obsolete documention (#3 below) refers to some kind of 
> "dedicated
>     to FreeBSD" concept (again, clearly a PC concept)...

PeeCee.. yeah..

>     but, bsdlabel complains if one newfs the "c" partition (i.e. whole 
> disk).
> 
> #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
>   a: 17773508       16    unused        0     0
>   c: 17773524        0    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28528   # "raw" part, 
> don't edit
> disklabel: partition c is not marked as unused!
> disklabel: An incorrect partition c may cause problems for standard 
> system utilities

newfs 'a' instead.

> 
> 3) Does anybody have a description of the disk initialization process 
> which applies to 5.3?
> 
>    The "diskformatting tutorial" hasn't been updated since 1997, and is 
> simply wrong!
>    The "handbook section 16.3.1 is also wrong.

No need to format SCSI disks in your StorageWorks shelf.

>    Probably the most glaring "error" I find is a constant reference to 
> "fdisk" which no longer exists!

fdisk is a PeeCee concept, it is not used on Alpha.

> 5) The drives I am playing with at the moment are:
> 
> "Blue" StorageWorks in a Blue Shelf -- DS-RZ1DA-VW 9.1G -- recognized 
> by SRM as: BB00911CA0 FW: 3B05.
> 
> "disklabel -A da1" displays the drives as 3600 RPM, when I know they 
> are 7200 RPM drives.

It displays 3600rpm for everything. Not to worry.

-- 
Wilko Bulte				wilko at FreeBSD.org