Documentation and similar issues with 5.3

[Wilko Bulte]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 08:47:00PM -0500, William H. Magill wrote..
> On 06 Jan, 2005, at 13:26, Wilko Bulte wrote:
> >>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.
> 
> As I recall, I couldn't get "Auto" to work. I had to define layouts 
> manually.

That is strange, given that it worked for me the last times I built the
release ISOs.  We have had problems in the past with disks that 
contained previous Tru64 or OVMS data / disklabels.  Zeroing the disks
before use with 'dd' or somesuch fixed that.  I do believe this issue
was fixed but I am not sure.

> >>   The "handbook section 16.3.1 is also wrong.
> >
> >No need to format SCSI disks in your StorageWorks shelf.
> 
> Could you elaborate on this? I suspect we may mean different things by 
> "format."
> 
> If they are not labeled and newfs'd how does one mount them? (I had 
> been using them with Tru64 earlier, so they had labels not recognized 
> by FreeBSD.) Note also that this shelf is NOT using the RAID card ... I 
> have to find a floppy with the code for the Mylex DAC960 -- that's my 
> next project.

OK, yes, we mean different things.  Formatting for me is sending your SCSI
disks a FORMAT UNIT SCSI command.  Creating filesystems / newfs-ing 
are obviously needed to do something sensible with the disks

> >fdisk is a PeeCee concept, it is not used on Alpha.
> 
> It would be good if there was something, somewhere which said that ... 
> like maybe in section 2.2 of the hardware notes.

Well, yeah... There is probably more like this stuff missing.  Lemme see
if I can add that info.  Note that there is a generic and a Alpha specific
part in the notes, these are generated from different source files.
proc-alpha.sgml is my baby, and like the name indicates contains the alpha
specific stuff.

Wilko

-- 
Wilko Bulte				wilko at FreeBSD.org