Re: Support for hard drives > 2 TB?

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost ("Thomas Mueller") writes:

>I wouldn't need the boot partition to boot > 2 TB.  I would have a 
>partitioning scheme like

Booting probably requires 512byte sectors.


>1: FreeDOS <= 8 GB (so FAT32 cluster size can be 4 GB)

FreeDOS requires a classic MBR and 512byte sectors. The
MBR then limits you to 2TB.


>2: NetBSD, subdivided for swap, /home, maybe /boot, /, maybe /usr (not in that 
>order)

You could add a GPT, this would make the whole disk accessible
to NetBSD. However, the GPT standard wants a dummy MBR that
prevents GPT-non-aware tools from trying to use the disk. This
is not really a problem, except for standard tools that just
overwrite your MBR when you write the GPT and vice versa.

Booting is still done from the MBR. The bootcode can use
a disklabel (or the default disklabel computed from MBR)
to find the root partition. This must be within the first
2TB and you need to guarantee the proper alignments between
MBR, disklabel and GPT partitions.

It is probably easier to boot the kernel from FreeDOS using
dosboot(8).

There was some effort to create a GPT aware bootloader,
but I don't know the results.


>3: FreeBSD

dunno


>4: Extended partition with logical partitions for swap, /home, possibly more 
>than one Linux (one would be Gentoo), maybe nonbootable extra data partitions 
>(try xfs?).

Linux could probably use the same GPT. Again this is probably
a problem with the partitioning tools.

Linux however already has a GPT aware bootloader.


-- 
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                                Michael van Elst
Internet: mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."