Dangerously Dedicated (was: How do I create large ...)
James Phillips
anti_spam256 at yahoo.ca
Wed Dec 9 19:42:32 UTC 2009
> Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 22:00:29 +0100
> From: Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de>
> Subject: Re: How do I create large partitions in FreeBSD?
> To: krad <kraduk at googlemail.com>
> Cc: Peter Steele <psteele at maxiscale.com>,
> "freebsd-questions at freebsd.org"
> <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
> Message-ID: <20091208220029.2052102f.freebsd at edvax.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> On Tue, 8 Dec 2009 20:52:52 +0000, krad <kraduk at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
> > stay away from dangerously dedicated it seems as
> though they are being
> > phased out
>
> I've followed the related discussion, but I'm not sure
> what
> to conclude from it... as far as I understood, creating an
> installation "dangerously dedicated" mode isn't possible
> from sysinstall anymore, but still possible via the
> command
> line tools. I don't see a reason why it is considered to
> be
> something bad, but the inclusion of a "carrier slice" for
> the OS's partitions has always been recommended. But for
> data disks where only one partition is intended, why
> create
> it inside a slice?
>
I sort of followed the discussion as well. There was some
disagreement about what "dangreously dedicated" means. Does it mean
getting rid of the DOS partition table (slices?) Or, does it mean
creating a slice or disks without BSD partitions? The Handbook (18.3)
says: "If the disk is going to be truly dedicated to FreeBSD, you
can use the dedicated mode. Otherwise, FreeBSD will have to live
within one of the PC BIOS partitions. FreeBSD calls the PC BIOS
partitions slices so as not to confuse them with traditional BSD
partitions."
The programer in charge of the change seemed to indicate that the
"Dangerously dedicated" mode (I assume that means no BSD partititons)
conflicts with "GEOM: Modular Disk Transformation Framework." GEOM
appears to be an asbtraction layer for accessing various disks. With
the move underway to start accessing all disk as SCSI(3 is device
independent (with translation help)) devices, it probably makes for
more elegant code. Handbook (19.2 GEOM Introduction) reads:
"GEOM permits access and control to classes -- Master Boot Records,
BSD labels, etc -- through the use of providers, or the special files
in /dev. Supporting various software RAID configurations, GEOM will
transparently provide access to the operating system and operating
system utilities."
The important thing in that quote is that "BSD labels" (and Master
Boot Records) are mentioned specificly.
Regards,
James Phillips
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