FreeBSD Slices on a PC Compatible Logical Device

[David Lloyd]

Hi There,

I partitioned my PC Compatible machine like this:

/dev/hda1 - Normal partition
/dev/hda2 - Normal partition
/dev/hda3 - ~100 gigabyte logical partition

There's no sectors left to make another normal partition.

 From what I can gather in the documentation, a FreeBSD slice (in this
case one made for/by FreeBSD 6.1) needs to be in a normal partition.
I've read the relevant parts of: the handbook, The Complete FreeBSD and
I have also seen what the FreeBSD 6.1 installer would attempt to do.

All of my reading seems to state that FreeBSD requires a "normal"
partition to make its slice(s) in.

That said, I seem to have a few options:

1. Somehow rearrange my partitions so that I can get a normal partition
    - GNU Parted would work except it doesn't seem to like XFS partitions

2. Reinstall my primary operating system (which happens to be Debian
    SID) and partition the disk such that I -can- put FreeBSD in an
    appropriate partition

3. Run FreeBSD under something like VMWare

My other alternative would be to take a great leap and use FreeBSD
exclusively and work out how to migrate my "home" data to FreeBSD.

Therefore, my questions would be:

1. Is there a way (other than using VMWare) to get FreeBSD onto a
    partition inside the large logical partition I have?

2. If not, does anyone know of any free (as in beer) tools that would be
    able to move Linux partitions about with XFS filesystems?
    - I don't think GNU Parted likes XFS filesystems

3. Would VMWare be a solution to my dilemma?

4. Is there an option that I haven't considered [apart from panickin!]?

DSL