Re: boot disk has two MBR partitions

[hans dinsen-hansen <hansdinsenhansen%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi Safi and Eric

On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 7:47 PM, Eric Schnoebelen <eric%cirr.com@localhost> 
wrote:
>
> "=?utf-8?Q?Saifi=20Khan?=" writes:
> - Now, i have a boot disk (NetBSD terminology) of 320 GB (SATA II).
> -
> - Booted my laptop with 'boot.iso' (NetBSD-current) and using the
> - 'NetBSD' fdisk utility, i created two MBR partitions (NetBSD
> - terminology) of the following size:
> -
> -  partition no 1: 20 GB   (base system, src)
> -  partition no 2: 300 GB (pkgsrc, other sources, mails etc.)
> -
> - i intend to setup 'ffs' on both the MBR partitions.
> -
> - in the linux world, the disk would typically be '/dev/sda' and the
> - two profound partitions would be
> -
> -  /dev/sda1
> -  /dev/sda2
> -
> - in the NetBSD scheme of things, the first disk is seen as 'wd0'.
> - In that case, how would the two 'MBR partitions' be addressed as?
>
> NetBSD doesn't use MBR partitions to define individual
> filesystems.  In NetBSD (and nearly every other UNIX-like
> operating system on the x86 besides Linux) uses one MBR
> partition to contain all of its filesystems.
>
> So, for the above partitioning scheme, you want a single NetBSD
> partion of 320Gb, and then two BSD partitions (or slices)
> defined using disklabel(8).  More than likely they will be wd0a and
> wd0e once you've completed labeling.

My tiny comment:  What about swap?  (!)
In my opinion swap should be at least to times the size of your memory..
Of course, swap could be a memory-disk.

Secondly I see no eason to divide a disk between  a root partition and a
partition for the rest.   In the "good old days (when things were bad)" we had
disk of some 60-80 MB.  and whenever something grew too big, we
had to re-arrange data via save/restore.  I have spent many a night with
that job

Personally, I use _one_big_parrtition_  for everything today.  The utility save
is used for sfety copies.  Restore only to find historical texts et c.
>
  <snip>
>
> - 3. does fsck like utility perform better when one has slice with
> -    BSD partitions rather than straight DOS like partition ?
>
> I'm not following what is being asked here
..
I do not either.  Please re-formulate your question.

Kind regards
  Hans