161 lines
7.3 KiB
Plaintext
161 lines
7.3 KiB
Plaintext
This is the FreeBSD DiskLabel Editor.
|
|
|
|
NOTE: If you're entering this editor from the update procedure then
|
|
you probably shouldn't (C)reate anything at all but rather use only
|
|
the (M)ount command to check and mount existing partitions for
|
|
upgrading.
|
|
|
|
If you would like the label editor to do most of the following for
|
|
you, simply type `A' for automatic partitioning of the disk.
|
|
|
|
If you wish to create partitions manually you may do so by moving the
|
|
highlighted selection bar with the arrow keys over the FreeBSD
|
|
partition(s) displayed at the top of the screen. Typing (C)reate
|
|
while a partition with available free space is selected will allow you
|
|
to create a BSD partition inside of it using some or all of its
|
|
available space.
|
|
|
|
Typing (M)ount over an existing partition entry (displayed in the
|
|
middle of the screen) will allow you to set a mount point for it
|
|
without initializing it. If you want it initialized, use the (T)oggle
|
|
command to flip the Newfs flag. When Newfs is set to "Y", the
|
|
filesystem in question will be ERASED and rebuilt from scratch!
|
|
|
|
NOTE: The (W)rite option is HIGHLY DANGEROUS and should NOT BE USED if
|
|
you're installing a new system! It's only for use in resurrecting
|
|
or changing an existing system, and will cause unpredictable things to
|
|
happen if you use it in any other circumstances. Don't do it! Wait
|
|
for the final commit dialog if you're express/novice installing, or
|
|
use the "Commit" menu item if you're custom installing, and do it there.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 should be considered essentially "read only" in your administration
|
|
of it.
|
|
|
|
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 might also want to read the
|
|
following explanation of how FreeBSD's new "slice" paradigm for
|
|
looking at disk storage works:
|
|
|
|
|
|
In FreeBSD's new system, a device name can be broken up into up to 3
|
|
parts. Take a typical name like ``/dev/sd0s1a'':
|
|
|
|
The first three characters represent the drive name. If we had
|
|
a system with two SCSI drives on it then we'd see /dev/sd0 and
|
|
/dev/sd1 as the device entries representing the entire drives.
|
|
|
|
Next you have the "slice" (or "FDISK Partition") number,
|
|
as seen in the Partition Editor. Assuming that our sd0
|
|
contained two slices, a FreeBSD slice and a DOS slice, that
|
|
would give us /dev/sd0s1 and /dev/sd0s2 as device entries pointing
|
|
to the entire slices.
|
|
|
|
Next, if a slice is a FreeBSD slice, you can have a number of
|
|
(confusingly named) "partitions" inside of it.
|
|
|
|
These 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. This gives some
|
|
backwards compatibility to utilities that still may not know
|
|
how to deal with the new slice scheme.
|
|
|
|
The compatibility slice names for our filesystem above would
|
|
also look like:
|
|
|
|
Name Mountpoint
|
|
---- ----------
|
|
sd0a /
|
|
sd0b <swap space>
|
|
sd0e /usr
|
|
|
|
Again, let it be noted: 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 will be mapped to 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 purpose of the label editor
|
|
becomes fairly clear: You're carving up the FreeBSD slices displayed
|
|
at the top of the screen into smaller pieces, which are displayed in
|
|
the middle of the screen, and then assigning FreeBSD file system names
|
|
(mount points) to them.
|
|
|
|
You can also use the label editor to mount existing partitions/slices
|
|
into your filesystem hierarchy, as is frequently done for DOS FAT
|
|
slices. 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 or (W)rite directly from this one. You're working with
|
|
what is essentially a copy of the disk label(s), both here and in the
|
|
FDISK Partition Editor, and the actual on-disk labels won't be
|
|
affected by any changes you make until you explicitly say so.
|
|
|