Partitioning - please not that again

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2012 01:05:00 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> I startet the FreeBSD installer, chose the shell and then run:
> 
> # mount -t ufs /dev/ad0s1 /mnt
> # cd /mnt
> # rm -r *
> # rm -r .*

That worked? I can hardly understand why /dev/ad0s1 is
mountable (except it's /dev/ad0s1c, i. e. you've initialized
the whole slice, but no swap then).

A typical construction for FreeBSD would be at least to have
/dev/ad0s1a, mounted to /, being the bootable root partition,
and /dev/ad0s1b, the swap partition. Further partitions could
have been created, e. g. /dev/ad0s1d for /var, and /dev/ad0s1e
for /usr.




> This does cause the issue I already had before. When I go back to the
> installer, for the partition editor I get:
> 
> ada0 298 GB MBR
>   ada0s1 57 GB freebsd
>   ada0s2 240 GB EBR
> [snip]
> 
> gpart show also doesn't display the 3 ufs and the swap any more.

Did it previously show them? I don't know if gpart supports
BSD-typical partitioning (i. e. partitions inside a slice)...

Option: The partition data has been lost. Only the slice "enclosing"
them has been kept.



> So I neither can install FreeBSD, nor can I restore the dumped PC-BSD.
> Is there no easy to use partitioning tool, comparable to e.g. Linux's
> gparted?

Basically, that's what ye olde installer "sysinstall" would have
done. I don't use the new installer "bsdinstall" because I prefer
using the CLI tools which offer more flexibility and seem to be
able to deal with nonstandard constructions such as "extended DOS
partitions" et al.



> How do I have to use the partition editor of the installer?

Usually as described in The FreeBSD Handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-partitioning.html

As it seems, the installer guide defaults to GPT; what you have
(judging from the Linux construction) is MBR, but there is a
slice available, and that should be sufficient.

You can compare:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-steps.html




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...