> From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
> Date: Wed, 09 Aug 1995 08:30:33 -0700

> On Wed, 9 Aug 1995 11:18:38 +0100 (BST) 
>  David Brownlee <D.K.Brownlee@city.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>  > 	I guess its mods to the kernel & disklabel
>  > 	You could define in the kernel config file what disklabel
>  > 	support you wanted.
>  > 
>  > 	options		NETBSD_DISKLABEL
>  > 	options         SUNOS_DISKLABEL
>  > 	options		MACOS_DISKLABEL
> 
> Indeed, it's arguable that all NetBSD ports should support the disklabel 
> format of all other NetBSD ports of at least the same byte order...

I have one idea to suggest on this subject:

It might be nice if interpretation of "foreign" disklabels could be
done in a user-level program; perhaps a new disk ioctl might let the
special user program "inject" a netbsd disklabel after reading the
foreign label out of the raw disk.

This way, the kernel would not need changes each time you encounter
strange, new disklabels.  Also, you could (if you want) explicitly
tell this program what format the foreigh disk label is instead of
asking the kernel to figure it out based on heuristic stuff.

Gordon Ross