The hard drives are labelled in the following way in Linux and FreeBSD:
Linux FreeBSD First IDE drive /dev/hda /dev/wd0 Second IDE drive /dev/hdb /dev/wd1 First SCSI drive /dev/sda /dev/sd0 Second SCSI drive /dev/sdb /dev/sd1
The partitions (FreeBSD slices) on an IDE drive are labelled in the following
way (/dev/hda
is used as an example):
Linux FreeBSD First primary partition /dev/hda1 /dev/wd0s1 Second primary partition /dev/hda2 /dev/wd0s2 Third primary partition /dev/hda3 /dev/wd0s3 Fourth primary partition /dev/hda4 /dev/wd0s4
The partitions in my FreeBSD slice is labelled in the following way. It is the
labelling you get by default. It is possible to change the labelling if you do
a custom installation of FreeBSD (/dev/hda4
is the FreeBSD slice in
the example):
Linux label FreeBSD label FreeBSD mount point /dev/hda5 /dev/wd0s4a / /dev/hda6 /dev/wd0s4b swap /dev/hda7 /dev/wd0s4e /var /dev/hda8 /dev/wd0s4f /usr
If you run dmesg
in Linux you will see this as (The linux kernel must be
build with UFS filesystem support for this to work. See section
Installing and preparing Linux):
Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
If you have installed FreeBSD in the /dev/sd1s3
slice
(/dev/sdb3
in Linux parlace), and /dev/sdb2
is a Linux
extended partition containing two logical partitions (/dev/sdb5
and
/dev/sdb6
), the previous example would look like this:
Linux label FreeBSD label FreeBSD mount point /dev/sdb7 /dev/sd1s3a / /dev/sdb8 /dev/sd1s3b swap /dev/sdb9 /dev/sd1s3e /var /dev/sdb10 /dev/sd1s3f /usr
This will be shown as
Partition check: sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < sdb5 sdb6 > sdb3 < sdb7 sdb8 sdb9 sdb10 >in the output from
dmesg
.
If you have a Linux extended partition after your FreeBSD slice you're in
for trouble, because most Linux kernels installation floppies are build
without UFS support, they will not recognise the FreeBSD partitions inside the
slice. What should have have been seen as (/dev/hda3
is the FreeBSD
slice and /dev/hda4
is the Linux extended partition)
Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 > hda4 < hda9 hda10 >is seen as:
Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 >
This can give you the wrong device assignment and cause the loss of data. My advice is to always put your FreeBSD slice after any Linux extended partitions, and do not change any logical partitions in your Linux extended partitions after installing FreeBSD!