Subject: Re: help on disklabel?
To: David Wallis <d.wallis@open.ac.uk>
From: Roland Dowdeswell <elric@imrryr.org>
List: port-alpha
Date: 09/25/2002 19:14:05
On 1032945739 seconds since the Beginning of the UNIX epoch
David Wallis wrote:
>

>My question really, is where does the geometry in disklabel come from,
>and why is it different?

The disklabel stores its own version of the geometry, which you
can edit with the disklabel(8) command.  The geometry in the
disklabel should come [initially] from the values the drive reported,
but you can change them.

>I'm afraid I also don't understand section '3.4.5 Partitions' in the
>install guide:
>
>'In the this example we will use a disk with the following "real"
>geometry, corresponding to the BIOS geometry of Figure 3-5.'

If you are not using a PC, then the ``BIOS geometry'' and all
statements about it can be safely ignored.  The BIOS geometry is
something that is necessary on the i386 during the boot process.

>Can anyone point me in the direction of some docs that will explains all
>this to me?

You can safely just edit the fields in the disklabel to match the
geometry reported by the disk in dmesg and then make some partitions
and newfs them.

	disklabel(8)
	http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/misc/#adding-a-disk

have some documentation, but I can't recall right now where the more
detailed docs are.

--
    Roland Dowdeswell                      http://www.Imrryr.ORG/~elric/