Re: Sysinstall's fdisk/disklabel should be improved

Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> On Tue, 28.10.2003 at 23:29:03 -0800, David O'Brien wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> What exactly do you mean by "PC Specification"? I'm not trying to make a
> "dangerously dedicated" disk. I just don't need a spare 63 sectors for
> DOS-compatibility. And leaving the first 63 sectors untouched is a
> DOS-ism, not a PC-ism.

Ironically, the best reference for FDISK-style layout of partition
tables, use of the fields in the FDISK partition table structure,
and general reference on checksums, 0xAA55, and the rest that I
have ever found is the PReP specification, chapter 6.

That's Power PC Reference Platform Specification, in case you were
wondering; it's a Motorolla document intended for use on Motorolla
hardware.

Some DEC (Compaq?  Hewlett-Compaqard?) Alpha firmware has the same
requirement that PReP has in this regard.

So do most OSs that run on x86 hardware, even when they are run on
non-x86 hardware (Solaris, et. al.).


I agree that the code could be cleaned up, but the layout on the
disk is pretty intentional.

-- Terry