Partition naming, fstab, and geli

[tk]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 02:45:15PM +0100, Polytropon wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:01:26 -0500, Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu> wrote:

> > As for 'd' vs 'e', sometime a long time and many generations ago there
> > was a convention of reserving 'd' for something.  I don't remember what
> > it was.  It was pre FreeBSD 3 and pre 1997 and maybe even pre any FreeBSD
> > and applied in some earlier Unix-en before the court cases, but not after.
> > That old convention accounts for documentation starting with using 'e' for 
> > extra partitions and skipping 'd'.   But, whatever that old convention
> > was, it has not been used for so long that it is meaningless nowdays
> > and 'd' can be used for whatever extra partition you want.
> 
> You say it: I KNEW that there was something someone had
> on his mind when reserving 'd' for something special...
> but WHAT it exactly was, I don't know.

If I remember correctly, NetBSD still uses (or did so until a few years
ago) the 'd' partition to represent the whole disk, while 'c' is used in
the usual way to represent the whole slice.


Regards
Thomas