How does FreeBSD access NetBSD, OpenBSD?

[Loren M. Lang]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 07:17:33PM -0800, Loren M. Lang wrote:
> I have FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD on the same hard drive of my system.
> How can I mount the NetBSD or OpenBSD partitions from FreeBSD?
> 
> Slice 1 - Ext3fs for data between linux/bsd
> Slice 2 - OpenBSD slice with 4 ufs partitions and swap (a,b,e,f,g)
> Slice 3 - FreeBSD slice with 4 ufs partitions and swap (a,b,d,e,f)
> Slice 4 - Extended slice composed of:
>    Slice 5 - NetBSD slice with 4 ufs partitions and swap (a,b,e,f,g)
>    Slice 6 - Unformatted as of yet.
> 
> FreeBSD is, of course running fine, but I can't see any of the other
> slices/partitions on the drive including the ext3fs partition.
> $ ls /dev/ad1*
> /dev/ad1        /dev/ad1s3      /dev/ad1s3c     /dev/ad1s3f
> /dev/ad1s6
> /dev/ad1s1      /dev/ad1s3a     /dev/ad1s3d     /dev/ad1s4
> /dev/ad1s2      /dev/ad1s3b     /dev/ad1s3e     /dev/ad1s5
> 
> I can seem to access all the linux partitions on my first drive ad0,
> but that drive is only linux so there are no complex partitions in
> slices like on ad1.  I would expect that the nature of geom, I should
> be able to access all the partitions fine, but I might be missing
> something.

Looking further into this, it seems that FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD
all have unique partition ids to represent their diskslice and geom_bsd
that translates the FreeBSD diskslices only looks for partitions with
the id reserved for FreeBSD so it will never find a NetBSD or OpenBSD
slice in any combination, even if it's on it's own harddrive.  Do all
there BSDs actually use a different format for their diskslice or why do
they use different ids.  If they are different, I would still expect
them to be similiar.  If that's the case, then it should be a simple
matter in FreeBSD 5.x to write a geom that translates the other BSD
diskslices as well.  Are their any good resources describing the
different BSD diskslice formats.  I might try taking some time and maybe
write a geom so FreeBSD can read them.

> 
> 
> -- 
> I sense much NT in you.
> NT leads to Bluescreen.
> Bluescreen leads to downtime.
> Downtime leads to suffering.
> NT is the path to the darkside.
> Powerful Unix is.
> 
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-- 
I sense much NT in you.
NT leads to Bluescreen.
Bluescreen leads to downtime.
Downtime leads to suffering.
NT is the path to the darkside.
Powerful Unix is.

Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc
Fingerprint: B3B9 D669 69C9 09EC 1BCD  835A FAF3 7A46 E4A3 280C