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Old 28th June 2019
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Default Installing OpenBsd on large drives, over 2tb

Hi every one, I got a new (used) PC, desktop, it is a HP...at this point I don't think the specs matter much, so any way here is what I am wondering about:
The PC did not come with any HD, something I missed when I ordered it. So I am installing 2 hds. It actually could take 6 hd's, but 2 is more then enough for me.
The thing is, all they have available are 2 drives that are some what larger then I planned, 1 is 3tb, the other 4tb.
Does any one here have experience with installing OpenBsd to this size of drives ?
I did some search and read about GPT, but get the impression it is not necessary, and think I would prefer not to use it.
My thoughts are to let the installer pretty much use the default layout,..except I like a bigger K: /home partition :
This is what I have on this PC now, :
Code:
garry$ df -h
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/sd0a     1005M    106M    848M    11%    /
/dev/sd0k      496G    121G    351G    26%    /home
/dev/sd0d      3.9G    1.8M    3.7G     0%    /tmp
/dev/sd0f      2.0G    910M   1002M    48%    /usr
/dev/sd0g     1005M    211M    744M    22%    /usr/X11R6
/dev/sd0h      9.8G    6.9G    2.5G    73%    /usr/local
/dev/sd0j      5.9G    2.0K    5.6G     0%    /usr/obj
/dev/sd0i      2.0G    2.0K    1.9G     0%    /usr/src
/dev/sd0e      9.7G    755M    8.5G     8%    /var
garry$
As you can see k: /home is almost 500G,
I am going to be just "aprox", on this, but if I use the "fdisk" e , and make the k: /home the same , 500G, I will still have close to 1400 G available. Could I add 2 more partitions, 700G each, IE: sd0l /storage and sd0m /storage-2 (note the l looks like a I to me, it is L but lowercase, l (if any letter is ok , maybe I use m, and n ?)
Any comments, other ideas, experiences, etc ?
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Old 28th June 2019
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Some general considerations. The MBR size limitation noted below is for for disks with 512-byte sectors.

MBR vs. GPT
  • MBR partition tables cannot address partitions above a 2TB limit. An OpenBSD MBR partition must exist entirely below the 2TB line. On larger drives, tt can only "extend" above the line by crafting the drive's disklabel(5) to exceed the MBR partition's boundaries. See the "b" option of the disklabel(8) editor.
  • Booting via MBR or GPT will be dependent upon the capabilities of the particular system's BIOS. Machines which pre-date EFI booting cannot boot via GPT at all, and there are newer systems which do not support "legacy" MBR booting.
  • From an OpenBSD installation administrative perspective, there's very little difference at installation time: merely select "g" to install a GPT when prompted to select MBR or GPT.
  • From an OpenBSD boot perspective, the console will use the EFI frame buffer driver, efifb(4). You'll still manage the console via the hardware-independent wscons(4) layer.
File systems
  • There are two "native" filesystems on OpenBSD: the Fast File System (FFS), and the Enhanced Fast File System (FFS2).
  • FFS2 is required for filesystems 2TB or larger.
  • FFS is required for the root filesystem.
  • The newfs(8) filesystem formatter will default to FFS for filesystems smaller than 1TB.
  • The newfs(8) filesystem formatter will default to FFS2 for filesystems 1TB or larger.
  • For clarity, when you run the installation script, it calls newfs(8) for you to format partitions.

Last edited by jggimi; 28th June 2019 at 11:52 PM. Reason: A little clarity. Note also that the FFS 2TB limit is with both 512 and 4096-byte sector sizes
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Old 29th June 2019
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Thanks, I don't have the PC here, now, it is in a shop where they will install the drives, but when I did look at it, and booted into the "bios", (might not be the correct term) , but any way it booted, and did have a optical drive, and then when I started installing from a CD, when it got to the Use entire disk :W, etc,... hah, no disk detected, and so when I looked,sure enough, no HD,...any way the Bios did show options:
Quote:
Booting via MBR or GPT will be dependent upon the capabilities of the particular system's BIOS. Machines which pre-date EFI booting cannot boot via GPT at all, and there are newer systems which do not support "legacy" MBR booting.
It has options for Both "Legacy", and EFI, as well as UEFI, so I will need to select either "Legacy" or UEFI, ? I think I would prefer "legacy",... if need be later when it is back here, I should post those details, before deciding ? I don't recall seeing anything about GPT,... thanks,....
So any way, it sounds like there should be no problem adding 2 extra partitions, labeled m , and n ? or is there a limit to the number of partitions ? I have never seen any mention of a limit, in any manuals, or documentation.
In fact 'man disklabel' says:
Quote:
a [part] Add new partition. This option adds a new
partition to the disk label. If no
partition letter is specified (a-p), the
user will be prompted for one.
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Last edited by PapaParrot; 29th June 2019 at 12:40 AM.
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Old 29th June 2019
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I think the manual's parenthetical reference to "a-p" indicates that these are the valid partition letters. This means that at most 16 partitions are supported, for example sd0a, sd0b, ..., sd0p .
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Old 29th June 2019
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PapaParrot PapaParrot is offline
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Stupid me, :
Quote:
man disklabel:
disklabel supports 15 configurable partitions, ‘a’ through ‘p’, excluding ‘c’. The ‘c’ partition describes the entire physical disk, is automatically created by the kernel, and cannot be modified or deleted by disklabel. By convention, the ‘a’ partition of the boot disk is the root partition, and the ‘b’ partition of the boot disk is the swap partition, but all other letters can be used in any order for any other partitions as desired.
Pretty clear, but just never entered my thick skull! ,....In any event I should be ok with 2 additional partitions
Thanks
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Old 29th June 2019
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It's very easy to not notice something like that, because it just works ... until you need partiton q
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