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Date:      Wed, 17 Aug 2016 20:56:31 +0300
From:      Andriy Gapon <avg@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org>, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc:        =?UTF-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=c3=b8rgrav?= <des@des.no>, src-committers <src-committers@FreeBSD.org>, "svn-src-all@freebsd.org" <svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org>, "svn-src-head@freebsd.org" <svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r304142 - head/usr.sbin/bsdinstall/partedit
Message-ID:  <a4329a5d-24e5-cef8-f951-68cd088d6c8b@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <445700cb-c4b4-9272-df17-a851a6200543@freebsd.org>
References:  <201608150930.u7F9UL1V069576@repo.freebsd.org> <e3454e8e-5d98-5bec-21de-8ea0db2b9b08@freebsd.org> <861t1n6749.fsf@desk.des.no> <581c856c-826b-529e-c9c6-a397fb679708@freebsd.org> <86wpjf4eun.fsf@desk.des.no> <8cb3fa1a-50cb-e238-d006-b98a628d446d@freebsd.org> <CANCZdfrUz-Hv3bTaYfx4k5q8usogzaDLRUPZktT75X5LYJapmw@mail.gmail.com> <445700cb-c4b4-9272-df17-a851a6200543@freebsd.org>

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On 17/08/2016 19:36, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> OK, so then what is the solution here? We have a number of tools that need to
> know this information: gpart, sade, bsdinstall, zfs, graid, etc. If we want to
> have a consistent set of defaults -- for example, to use 4K across the board,
> which I think is a good idea -- there should be a central place to set this that
> does not involve hacking a variety of independent tools. Do you disagree?
> 
> I don't care how that happens. It happens that the way we currently encode this
> is geom stripesize. If we feel like we can't get this right in drivers, then we
> should provide a tunable to set a minimum default alignment. You could implement
> this in lots of different ways. But having static values hardcoded in random
> places that makes similar tools (sade, gpart) behave inconsistently cannot
> possibly be the answer.
> 
> This is my point, from beginning to end. Is there any reason -- at all -- that
> we should prefer per-tool one-off changes to fixing the central mechanism we
> already have to give consistent results that we think are reliable?

It would be perfect to get a correct description of a disk and to do that in
central place.  But still I, as a user / administrator, want to be able to
_force_ the alignment that I want when I partition a disk, create a filesystem,
etc.  That is, even if the kernel reports the perfectly correct information and
the tools know how to automatically do what's best for me, I still want to eb
able to override.  And I think that installers and administrative tools should
provide a way to do that.  And many already do, e.g. 'gpart add -a X'.
So, I do not see how striving for the better disk detection (in a central place)
and having more knobs in the administration tools are mutually exclusive or
conflicting goals.

Just my two bits.
-- 
Andriy Gapon



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