Advanced Format Drive ? GPT ?

[Al Plant]

Warren Block wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Nov 2012, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> 
>> I'm looking at the examples section of the gpart(8) man page.  May I
>> assume that if I just want to merely ``try out'' GPT... you know...
>> taking it out on the road for a first time test run... that I can
>> just do the first five (5) commands listed under EXAMPLES and then
>> that will be enough to go ahead and try installing FreeBSD into the
>> created freebsd-ufs partition?
>>
>> Even assuming that the answer is yes, I have still more questions...
>> Where are these magic numbers coming from??  I am specifically talking
>> about the number "34" in the "-b 34" option and also the number "162"
>> in the "-b 162" option.  Tha man page just tosses those into the example
>> command lines without saying a word about them.  And you can probably
>> guess what it is that is especially troubling to me about them... neither
>> one of them is divisible by 8 (i.e. 4KB/512B).  So would the examples
>> in the current gpart(8) man page produce an Epic Fail when and if they
>> were used with a modern "Advanced Format" drive?
> 
> -b is the beginning block of a partition.  34 is a magic value, the size 
> of a standard GPT partition table.  A good overall reference on GPT is 
> the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
> 
> Remember that the man page is a reference, not a tutorial.  I wanted 
> more specific notes that followed best practices, and that was the 
> source for this article:
> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
> 
> In general, you create a "partition scheme" first.  This can be MBR, 
> GPT, or others.  (But use GPT.)
> 
> Rather than combine the bootcode with the partition table, GPT just uses 
> a small partition for it.  Since the standard GPT allows for up to 128 
> partitions, there's no reason not to use them.
> 
> Next come other partitions for UFS or ZFS filesystems or swap.
> 
> That's it, really.  The rest is details the man page can explain, like 
> additional options for alignment.  (The creation of the first UFS 
> partition in the article does not use -a because older versions of gpart 
> did unexpected things when -a and -b were combined.  The alignment 
> produced is correct.)
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to 
> "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> 


Aloha Warren,


I looked over the GPT sample and have a question.

In the fstab entries, something that uses msdosfs, (thumb drive maybe).

Can you enter it directly in the fstab after the basic partitions and 
other /dev have been entered in the initial setup?

Thanks.


~Al Plant - Honolulu, Hawaii -  Phone:  808-284-2740
   + http://hawaiidakine.com + http://freebsdinfo.org +
   + http://aloha50.net   - Supporting - FreeBSD  7.2 - 8.0 - 9* +
   < email: noc at hdk5.net >
"All that's really worth doing is what we do for others."- Lewis Carrol