Subject: Re: why is partition c always the full disk?
To: Paul B Dokas <dokas@cs.umn.edu>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: current-users
Date: 07/13/1998 16:51:02
> Why is partition c always the full disk?

It's not.  On NetBSD/i386, for example, partition d is the full disk;
partition c is just the NetBSD portion of the disk.  And on any port, I
think, if you change RAW_PART in the right place and rebuild the world,
you can use whichever partition you desire as the full-disk partition.
If you pick a or b, though, you may have a little trouble because of
things that default to a==root and b==swap on your boot drive, but
those are probably fixable or overrideable without too much pain.  But
I am pretty sure RAW_PART is always the full disk, regardless of what
the disk label may think.

If you try to do completely without a RAW_PART, you will have a lot of
kernel work to do, and a number of user-land utilities will, um, shall
we say, "need work".

It'd probably be easier to go to 16 partitions on the port you're using
and just let c be the whole disk, 'cause then you'll have all the
partitions you need, if you were anywhere near ok with only 8.  I've
done this for the sun3 and sparc ports, and it was not difficult for
either one.  (I'll be glad to discuss it and/or supply patches to
anyone who's interested.)

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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