On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 10:22:20AM -0800, Alex Viskovatoff wrote: > I did an install of OpenSolaris in which I specified that the whole disk > should be used for the installation. Here is what "format> verify" produces > for that disk: > > Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks > 0 root wm 1 - 60797 465.73GB (60797/0/0) 976703805 > 1 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > 2 backup wu 0 - 60797 465.74GB (60798/0/0) 976719870 > 3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > 4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > 5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > 6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > 7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > 8 boot wu 0 - 0 7.84MB (1/0/0) 16065 > 9 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 > > I have several questions. First, what is the purpose of partitions 2 and 8 > here? Why not simply have partition 0, the "root" partition, be the only > partition, and start at cylinder 0 as opposed to 1?
It's traditional in the VTOC label to have slice 2 encompass all cylinders. You don't have to use it. In SPARC, the boot blocks fit into the 15 "free" blocks before the filesystem actually starts writing data. On x86, the boot code requires more data. So putting a UFS filesystem on cylinder 0 would not leave sufficient room for boot code. The traditional solution is that data slices on x86 begin at cylinder 1, leaving cylinder 0 for boot data. -- Darren _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
