Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved

 Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 16:43:12, q (Ulrich Spoerlein) wrote about "Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved": 

>> It is NOT useless.  Why do you think it is?  Perhaps you don't relize
>> that some BIOS's wont boot from a hard disk that isn't partitioned to
>> agree with the specifications of the PeeCee.  If you want to treat your
>> PC as a Sun, don't -- buy a Sun, FreeBSD runs on that too.
US> What exactly do you mean by "PC Specification"? I'm not trying to make a
US> "dangerously dedicated" disk. I just don't need a spare 63 sectors for
US> DOS-compatibility. And leaving the first 63 sectors untouched is a
US> DOS-ism, not a PC-ism.

Well, "dangerously dedicated" is name of partitioning mode which doesn't
leave one track for dos PT and MBR switcher. It's just name. If you doesn't
like this name, rename it in your mind.

US> The BIOS' only job is to load the MBR (sector 0) which will then read
US> and check the partition table and load the first sector of the 'active'
US> partition into memory and pass execution to it.

In real, BIOS can read master PT and even BPB on FAT to found which geometry
(normal/ECHS/LBA-assist) should be reported.

US> Therefore I created a big partition from sector 1 to the last sector
US> with fdisk from the LiveCD. After writing the partition table I had to
US> reboot sysinstall because it didn't recognise the partition layout has
US> changed. So could someone be so kind to teach sysinstall a 'reset'
US> button which will re-read the partition table and the disklabel info?

It should be done automatically unless there are opened/mounted partitions
on this disk. If you don't see changes, check whether you really asked
to write changes immediately. Otherwise, they are delayed until commit phase.

US> PS: I have a Sparcstation 20 and a b0rken Ultra1. None of them run FreeBSD.

Do you consider this as a bug?


-netch-