[wplug-bsd] Fdisk? formatting ext2 partitions as ufs

[Bill Moran]

Brandon Kuczenski <brandon at 301south.net> wrote:
> I need some help formatting my disks.
> 
> Since I am now set to reformat my ext2 partitions as ufs, I need to figure
> out some kind of deal with disk geometry.  I'm using /stand/sysinstall as
> an interface to fdisk, though I would be quite happy to just use fdisk
> (but I don't know anything about it).
> 
> So I was going through, and it gave me a warning that the geometry
> specified for the disk was incorrect, and I should manually set it.  But I
> don't know anything about my disk's geometry -- I was relying on fdisk to
> figure that out.
> 
> Now I'm happy to just blunder on through this thing, except for the
> following problem: I have two slices on this disk, both formatted ext2.
> What I've done so far is copy all the data from the second slice onto the
> first and umounted the second slice.  Now I want to format it, but I'm
> afraid of spoiling the data on the first slice if I screw something up.
> 
> So: if the disk is already partitioned correctly but I'm formatting it a
> slice at a time, do I need to worry about the geometry?

Not that I can imagine.

Here's what I recommend.
1) Back up your critical data _off_ this computer.  You're 100% right that
   it's pretty catastrophic if you format the wrong partition.
2) umount the partition you want to reformat.
3) Look in /etc/fstab to see what device that partition uses.
4) newfs that device (i.e. newfs /dev/ad0s1a ... or whatever the partition
   name ends up being.)
5) Alter /etc/fstab to change ext2 to ufs for that partition.
6) Remount and replace your data.
7) Rinse and repeat for the next partition.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com