[GLLUG] FreeBSD Question

[Matt Graham]

On Tuesday 21 May 2002 15:53, Michael Harrington wrote:
> I'm trying to mount a FreeBsd drive with Linux.  I should be able to
> do this accrding to the HOW-TOs I've been reading.
>
> here is a sample of my command:
>
> mount -t ufs /dev/hda1 /mnt (i've also tried to specify the ufstype
> as 44bsd)
>
> I keep getting an error message like " wrong fs type, bad option, abd
> superblock ...or too many mounted filesystems".  I should add that
> I'm using a linuxcare BBC.  

BSD uses both the "normal" x86 BIOS partition table and its own weird 
partition layout at the same time, at least on the x86.  You designate 
one x86 partition as a *BSD partition, and the BSD installer builds its 
own partition table within this x86 partition.

This means that the OS kernel needs to be able to read the BSD partition 
table to make any sense of the BSD partition.  Linux can do this, of 
course--the kernel messages will say something like:

Partition check:
hda: hda1! <hda5 hda6 hda7>

Meaning that hda1 had a BSD partition inside it, and the BSD partition 
had 3 smaller partitions within it.  To mount a BSD partition, you need 
to do "mount -t ufs /dev/hda5 /mnt/bsd -o ufstype=44bsd" .

I don't know if the Linuxcare BBC includes this BSD partition support.  
You should be able to tell if it does by examining the output of "dmesg 
| grep -A2 Partition" .  If it doesn't include this BSD partition 
support, you may have a hard time finding a Linux rescue system that 
does understand BSD partition tables.  (Linux rescue systems typically 
are for rescueing Linux systems!)  In that case, you might want to try 
out PicoBSD.

-- 
   If the chances are a million to one against something happening, the
   odds are 50/50 that it will.  Especially if that something is a bad
   thing.
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