On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 11:32:35AM -0600, seebs@plethora.net wrote:
> In message <v67ltvlvl3.fsf@kechara.flame.org>, Michael Graff writes:
> >You're describing FreeBSD's "slices" where each slice is a BIOS
> >partition, I believe.
> >So, the notation would be sd0s3a for BSD partition a from "slice" 3...
> 
> I'd love
> this, especially if NetBSD were able to grok other *BSD and BSD/OS partition
> types.

  One thing I _don't_ like about the FreeBSD slice, is that
the disklabel partitions are all described with offsets from
the beginning of the slice, rather than from the beginning of the
disk.  I could be wrong, but with that kind of setup, I see no
way to put a swap entry in to the slice 1 disklabel for the
setup shown below (we need swap to be a separate BIOS partition
for various reasons).  One would need negative offsets.  And
for some reason, the FreeBSD "swapon /dev/da0s0b" command is
rejected.  But that's for a different mailing list...  :)

  slice 0    slice 1
[  swap  ][ / | /usr ]

  Personally, I really like the NetBSD disklabel "if you know
which sector on the _disk_ (not just partition) to use, I'll
blindly use it" method.  It's been quite handy.

  Brian