Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 08:58:50 -0600 (CST) From: FreeBSD <freebsd@KIWI-Computer.com> To: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca> Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Removal of Disklabel Message-ID: <200011201458.IAA44992@KIWI-Computer.com> In-Reply-To: <200011201332.eAKDWTB68389@cwsys.cwsent.com> from Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group at "Nov 20, 2000 05:31:56 am"
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> > Yes, but fdisk is awkward to use for editing. > > How about fdisk -e in similar vein as disklabel -e? Good idea. This has been on my own personal project list for some time... > As the PC architecture requires, just use an fdisk partition rather > than a disklabel slice (slices are what UNIX vendors call them). For > that matter I'd be happy if we removed disklabel from the picture > entirely. I think that should be our goal. The architecture requires > an fdisk label and disklabel is redundant. It seems like a no-brainer > to me, just remove support for disklabel entirely. Simple and end of > argument. The problem with the fdisk slices is that there is only room for 4 ... disklabel gives us 8, no wait.. 6 if you have a swap and 5 if you don't. I've never been a fan of this. May I make a recommendation (flame away, boys): redo disklabel while we're at it. it seems counter-intuitive to me, as well as wasteful, to make partition "c" the whole disk and skip "d" altogether. IMHO, "da0s1" should refer to the whole disk, "da0s1a" should be the first physical partition, "da0s1b" the second partition, etc. down to "h". This gives us 8 partitions of any type: swap or FS. This is not ambiguous, the "swapon" would detect in the label p_fstype and if it were not equal to FS_SWAP it wouldn't try to swap-mount it. Same goes for any FS mount, if p_fstype != FS_BSDFFS or whatnot, it wouldn't allow mounting of that FS. I know this has been discussed and back in 2.2.5 IIRC the partitions/slices were renamed from da0a to da0s1a. But it seems pointless and stupid to keep propagating bad and very confusing methodologies just for historical purposes. Keep it simple stupid and make it make sense, and yes I've wanted to use past "h" before... One more gripe: why was s1 chosen to be the first logical slice and not s0? Did we computer scientists start counting with 1 by accident? Should I present these suggestions to -current or will I get flamed there too? =) No seriously, I think we should fix this (IMO) "broken" issue soon. Those who have current systems won't have to rebuild their systems or anything, just the sysinstaller should allocate logical partition numbers in physical order, and build the fstab in such a way. That shouldn't break current usage, just make old-timers think a little. ;) --Rick C. Petty, aka Snoopy rick@kiwi-computer.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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