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Diffstat (limited to 'usr.sbin/sade/help/partition.hlp')
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diff --git a/usr.sbin/sade/help/partition.hlp b/usr.sbin/sade/help/partition.hlp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19b6ce1 --- /dev/null +++ b/usr.sbin/sade/help/partition.hlp @@ -0,0 +1,122 @@ +This is the FreeBSD DiskLabel Editor. + +You should use this editor to create at least the following +filesystems: + + Name Purpose Min Size? Optional? + ---- ------- --------- --------- + / Root filesystem 20MB No + swap Swap space 2 * MEM No + /usr System & user files 80MB or more Yes + +Note: If you do not create a /usr filesystem then your / filesystem +will need to be bigger - at least 100MB. This is not recommended as +any media errors that may occur during disk I/O to user files will +corrupt the filesystem containing vital system files as well. It is +for this reason that / is generally kept on its own filesystem, where +it's basically considered "read only" by the system and hence a good +deal safer. + +Swap space is a little tricker, and the rule of "2 * MEM" is simply a +best-guess approximation and not necessarily accurate for your +intended usage of the system. If you intend to use the system heavily +in a server or multi-user application, you may be well advised to +increase this size. You may also create swap space on multiple drives +for a larger "total" swap and this is, in fact, recommended if you +have multiple, fast drives for which such load-balancing can only help +overall I/O performance. + +The /usr filesystem should be sized according to what kind of +distributions you're trying to load and how many packages you intend +to install in locations like /usr/local. You can also make /usr/local +a separate filesystem if you don't want to risk filling up your /usr +by mistake. + +Another useful filesystem to create is /var, which contains mail, news +printer spool files and other temporary items. It is a popular +candidate for a separate paritition and should be sized according to +your estimates of the amount of mail, news or spooled print jobs that +may be stored there. + +WARNING: If you do not create a separate filesystem for /var, space +for such files will be allocated out of the root (/) filesystem +instead. You may therefore wish to make the / partition bigger if you +expect a lot of mail or news and do not want to make /var its own +partition. + + +If you're new to this installation, you should also first understand +how FreeBSD 2.0.5's new "slices" paradigm for looking at disk storage +works. It's not very hard to grasp. A "fully qualified slice name", +that is the name of the file we open in /dev to talk to the slice, is +optionally broken into 3 parts: + + First you have the disk name. Assume we have two SCSI + drives in our system, which gives us `sd0' and `sd1'. + + Next you have the "Slice" (or "FDISK Partition") number, + as seen in the Partition Editor. Assume that our sd0 contains + two slices, a FreeBSD slice and a DOS slice. This gives us + sd0s1 and sd0s2. Let's also say that sd1 is completely devoted + to FreeBSD, so we have only one slice there: sd1s1. + + Next, if a slice is a FreeBSD slice, you have a number of + (confusingly named) "partitions" you can put inside of it. + These FreeBSD partitions are where various filesystems or swap + areas live, and using our hypothetical two-SCSI-disk machine + again, we might have something like the following layout on sd0: + + Name Mountpoint + ---- ---------- + sd0s1a / + sd0s1b <swap space> + sd0s1e /usr + + Because of historical convention, there is also a short-cut, + or "compatibility slice", that is maintained for easy access + to the first FreeBSD slice on a disk for those programs which + still don't know how to deal with the new slice scheme. + The compatibility slice names for our filesystem above would + look like: + + Name Mountpoint + ---- ---------- + sd0a / + sd0b <swap space> + sd0e /usr + + FreeBSD automatically maps the compatibility slice to the first + FreeBSD slice it finds (in this case, sd0s1). You may have multiple + FreeBSD slices on a drive, but only the first one may be the + compatibility slice! + + The compatibility slice will eventually be phased out, but + it is still important right now for several reasons: + + 1. Some programs, as mentioned before, still don't work + with the slice paradigm and need time to catch up. + + 2. The FreeBSD boot blocks are unable to look for + a root file system in anything but a compatibility + slice right now. This means that our root will always + show up on "sd0a" in the above scenario, even though + it really lives over on sd0s1a and would otherwise be + referred to by its full slice name. + +Once you understand all this, then the label editor becomes fairly +simple. You're either carving up the FreeBSD slices displayed at the +top of the screen into smaller pieces (displayed in the middle of the +screen) and then putting FreeBSD file systems on them, Or you're just +mounting existing partitions/slices into your filesystem hierarchy; +this editor lets you do both. Since a DOS partition is also just +another slice as far as FreeBSD is concerned, you can mount one into +in your filesystem hierarchy just as easily with this editor. For +FreeBSD partitions you can also toggle the "newfs" state so that +the partitions are either (re)created from scratch or simply checked +and mounted (the contents are preserved). + +When you're done, type `Q' to exit. + +No actual changes will be made to the disk until you (C)ommit from the +Install menu! You're working with what is essentially a copy of +the disk label(s), both here and in the FDISK Partition Editor. |