Re: More than 8 labels per slice

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 04:21:32PM -0400, Allan Fields wrote:
>Partition Layout:
>1:	OpenBSD
>2:	FreeBSD
>3:	NetBSD
>4:	Extended
>	5:	Windows 2K (NTFS)
>	6:	Shared (FAT32)
>	7	DFBSD Shared /usr (ufs)
>	8	DF/FBSD Shared /home (ufs)
>	9:	Linux Swap
>	10:	Linux Boot (e2fs)
>	11:	Linux Temp (e2fs)
>	12:	Linux Gentoo Root (e2fs)
>	13:	Linux Gentoo Usr (reiserfs)
>	14:	...
>	n:	Test Partitions

I use the Ranish partition manager with layout something like:
1:	FAT C:
2:	one each of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, etc.
3:	extended containing ntfs, different /usr, shared data, etc.
4:	Ranish

1 & each 2 are about 150 MB.  4 is the partial track at the end.  I
only ever change partition 2, between the different things I want to
boot, leaving 1, 3 and 4 alone.

>Additionally, to the best of my knowledge it's not support/advisable
>to have any BSD disklabels in extended logical partitions.  Should
>this be supported in the future?  (Perhaps w/ GEOM)

By having only one BSD visible at a time, that's not a huge problem.

Like you, I had problems trying to use all of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and
OpenBSD without separate primary partitions, so now they each have
them, but not all visible at the same time.  Of course, these
partitions only need to be big enough to boot from, although I make
mine big enough for a minimal install, including /usr.  I then make a
bigger partition in the extended area for /usr and everything else.
Actually, I install everything on the partition in the extended area
from / down, then after mounting the extended partition, I do
something like
	mount /ext
	cd /; mv usr usr.old; ln -s /ext/usr .

This means if I need to reinstall off CD, as sometimes happens with a
-CURRENT, I can do it in the extended partition without overwriting
/bin and /sbin until I want to.

I have a second disk in the machine with more bootable partitions,
managed similarly for DragonFly (not yet installed), Plan9, and
probably another branch of FreeBSD after the eventual 5-STABLE.

The version of Ranish I'm using is the 'beta'.  I've never had a
problem with it.

-- 
Christopher Vance