Re: Changes in disk layout in VAX?????

>> It isn't new. The first cylinder is reserved for the boot blocks.

I have never seen this before on a VAX, only on peecees, where
the desire is to leave space for boot loaders as in load winblows
in one space, *nix in another, etc.  On a VAX, the only thing I
ever want to load is Ultrix or *BSD.  There is no need for a boot
loader type of system.
 
>An ffs filesystem actually leaves the first 8k on a partition free, 
>that also includes the first partition on disk. And the vax only need
>a little less than 8k for its boot block, so reserving a cylinder for
>it sounds like a waste of disk space.

This is typically what I am used to on a VAX.

Do we need a whole cylinder reserved for boot loaders (since the
usual boot block is tiny relatively speaking)?  What is the logic
behind reserving the additional space, other than to conform to
peecee logic?  If we do, that is fine, I just want to understand
the logic, rhyme, reason, etc.

I just did a classical cyclical dump/restore to clone the sd0 to
sd1, followed by a disklabel -B to write the boot block, and the
sd1 does not boot with that 1 cylinder stuff on the front of the
disk.  The boot prom is looking for a boot block there, and it
ain't there.

So, what is being written to cylinder 0, and what is being written
to sdXa in its ffs boot block in the build 33 or thereabouts vs
the build 14 or thereabouts, relating to this new reserved cylinder?
I am missing what is changing, here.

Thanks

Bob Keys


(I also noticed that the dump/restore of root from sd0 to sd1
did not copy the fstab... I had to cp it manually, so I could
edit it from sd0-sd1 targets.  Something strange is happening
in VAXland....need input.... need input....)