gpart, bsdlabel and fdisk

From: Aristedes Maniatis <ari_at_ish.com.au>
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:17:14 +1100
We are setting up a FreeBSD system from scratch and wanting to understand the new gpart utility. Our goal is to create a ZFS bootable install (mirror). In the past our approach has been to:

1. fdisk (allocate entire disk)
2. partition (1Gb UFS boot partition, swap and rest empty for ZFS)
3. set up ZFS [1]


Now we want to understand how to avoid the bootable UFS partition (which causes us some grief), but there is very little information about gpart as the tool to do it. I've found various guides (eg [2]) but am a little underwhelmed by the documentation, especially with magic commands like this as part of the set up:

echo 'a 1' | fdisk -f - /dev/ad4

It appears that gpart is largely replacing fdisk and bsdlabel.

* is this the future for FreeBSD and we should use gpart from here on? Are the old tools deprecated?

* we tried to reinstall the machine with some 7.2 CDs but the gparted disks caused fdisk to crash. Is this expected?

* is the result of using gpart completely different to the bsdlabel/fdisk we've known? Are the partitions on disk quite different?

* is there some source of good documentation out there other than the man page for gpart?

* has the MBR changed now with gpart?


Thanks

Ari Maniatis


[1] https://www.ish.com.au/solutions/articles/freebsdzfs
[2] http://outpost.h3q.com/patches/manageBE/create-FreeBSD-ZFS-bootfs.txt

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Received on Wed Oct 21 2009 - 03:17:17 UTC

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