On May 18, 2008, at 8:54 AM, Jay wrote:

you are making a lot of bad assumptions.

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> If I have my "a" slice/partition is a "small" swap partition and my  
> "c" slice
> is a "large" BSD partition, setup should install to "c".

you should not use c for anything.  it's the whole disk.

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>
> Or at least maybe prompt. Usually I want fewer prompts/questions,  
> but..
>
> I ran into this problem because Solaris setup encourages the swap
> partition/slice to be first.

solaris does this because it expands the installer into the swap  
partition and runs it from there.

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>
> Luckily "a" filled up during setup and not later, so damage/pain was
> minimized.

you're assuming that openbsd partitions need to be on the disk in  
alphabetical order.  this is false
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>
> I realize the defaults in the install and the directions have you  
> create the
> BSD slice/partition as "a" so if you ignore Solaris you tend to get  
> it right.

yes.  if you don't assume that openbsd will work like <other OS> and  
actually read the docs you tend to be better off

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> Any chance ever of a "swap file" instead of a "swap partition/slice"?

yes.  i leave the googling up to you.

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> I'm sure this isn't a good "bug report", and debatable, so misc...

I"m _guessing_ that what you're trying to achieve ( unadvisedly ) is  
to have a tiny swap partition at the beginning of the disk and a  
single partition for the OS.  I'm not going to bother preaching at you  
about why this is bad, if you were interested in why you'd have  
already taken the time to find out.

you can do this by creating the b (swap) partition first during the  
install and then creating the a partition _physically_after_it_ on the  
disk.

Luckily, you don't have to do it this way.  you can simply follow the  
instructions in the INSTALL.<platform> file and end up with a sane  
partitioning scheme.
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>
> - Jay
>

Ben