can't mount msdos fs on freebsd6?

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Jeff D. Hamann wrote:

> sorry, partial newbie here...
>
> mothra# fdisk -s /dev/ad0
>
> yields,
>
> /dev/ad0: 193821 cyl 16 hd 63 sec
> Part    start    size    type    flags
> 1:     63    61432497 0x07 0x00
> 2:    61432560 61448625 0x0f 0x00
> 3:    122881185    72485280 0xa5 0x80
>
> I also made my partition using partition magic 7.0. Should I have mad 
> ethe partition using xp?
>
> does this have anything to do with the fact that the parition is an 
> extended partition?

Try mounting it as /dev/ad0s5 and see if that works. 

Making things with PM is fine.  But it being an extended partition 
certainly makes a difference.  If these are the only three partitions on 
your disk then making one extended seems a waste of time.  The point of 
extended partitions, AFAIK,  is that you can put more partitions inside 
one, thus extending the the limit from 4.  If all you have is 3 then you 
just don't need one to be extended.  (Of course, I can't see what else 
you may have inside that extended partition, so if you have more in 
there then you may well need one to be extended.  Without more info, I 
cannot say).  I have no idea why PM always defaults to trying to make a 
new partition as extended.

In FreeBSD, the first extended partition is 5, the next 6 etc.  And that 
is counted in the order they were *made* (that's my experience to date) 
and *not* the order that you can see them in PM, for example.  Note, 
however, that many standard FreeBSD tools (fdisk, sysinstall) don't deal 
with logical partitions inside extended partitions.  I don't believe you 
could boot from one for example, nor use sysinstall to newfs one for 
you.  For FAT32 or NTFS using one should be fine -- I have FAT32s inside 
extended partitions with no problems.

Btw, in Unix-land(*), DOS/fdisk partitions are called "slices".  And 
inside a slice you make your Unix partitions (s3a for / etc).  Yes, this 
is a pain, but Unix had partitions when DOS was a piece of crud which 
only had floppies.  Unfortunately, some genius decided to pinch the term 
for the way DOS/windows divided up a hard disk; Microsoft went on to 
rule the world, and now confusion reigns and getting there first counts 
for nothing :-(

--Alex

(*) Linux is different and does treat it's partitions as the same as 
DOS/fdisk partitions, which must make multiple installations a real pain 
in the behind.  It also explains why most Linux installations are /boot, 
/ and one monolithic partitions for everything else.  But we all know 
that Linux is not Unix :-)