Partitioning with gpart or old style slices?

[Warren Block]

On Sat, 4 Jun 2011, Robert Simmons wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 10:43 PM, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
>> There's a sample in the second half of my disk setup article:
>>
>> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
>
> Looks good.  I have a few critiques:
>
> 1) Linux and FreeBSD do not have alignment requirements, as far as I
> know.  So you may want to include a note about this when you say
> "Create partition for /. It should start at the 1M boundary for
> alignment on 4K sector drives, or 2048 blocks:"  This would only be
> necessary for dual-boot with an OS that has alignment requirements
> such as windows.  This would essentially be the difference between the
> two old methods of dedicated and not.

The 1M size is compatible with Windows and aligns partitions for better 
performance on 4K sector drives.  Doesn't affect performance on 512-byte 
sector drives, easier to set up initially than add later, and costs less 
than 1M of space.  Cheap compatibility insurance, I guess I'm saying.

> 2) Perhaps add a note about softupdates (-U) for partitions other than
> / when you describe the newfs steps.

Yikes, yes.

> I think your article would be a good place to start for making an
> updated section in the handbook.

Thanks!