Subject: What shall we do with the drunken disklabel?
To: None <port-sgimips@netbsd.org>
From: Soren S. Jorvang <soren@wheel.dk>
List: port-sgimips
Date: 07/01/2000 15:38:52
Hi.
SGI's have a 16-partition disklabel rather similar to the BSD one.
Since it is necessary to use that rather than a native BSD disklabel
if you want to boot from the disk, we can't just ignore it.
The conventions are as follows.
0: root
1: swap
6: usr
7: volume body (similar to the NetBSD/i386 'c' partition.)
8: volume header (simple filesystem for boot loaders etc.)
10: whole disk (normal RAW_PART equivalent.)
Currently /sgimips has RAW_PART == 10, which many people, including
myself, think will be confusing for people used to other NetBSD
platforms.
Several people have suggested simply swapping partitions 2 and 10.
Another way could be to just ignore partition 2 (replacing it with
a synthetic RAW_PART) or shifting partitions 2+ upwards by one.
Votes so far have been for exchanging 2 and 10. What do other people
think?
[Of course, the real solution is 'wedges', but oh well..]
--
Soren