On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 06:41:23PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 06:57:21AM +0900, Henry Nelson wrote:
> > > Try 'fdisk -u wd0' which should take you through interactive mode, one of
> > 
> > This is where my troubles have begun, I would like to run fdisk on the
> > command line NON-interactively (use the -f option).
> 
> Why?

Mostly for reasons of poor eyesight and incoordination.  (= the brain
doesn't get all the information it needs, and the fingers don't move
the way the brain intended them too.)

> fdisk has a lot more sanity check when run interactively, and it will
> give defaults for values that may be the ones you want.

I think for sectors and cylinder values (the -s option) that is true.
(But I sure wish the default for NetBSD's fdisk would be a single and
active NetBSD partition, and not DOS of all things.)

It seems clear that fdisk was intended to be run interactively.  In my
case, unfortunately, that means more time required, more care, and more
chance for error.

> The non-interactive version is really for scripts.

For me, scripts are the way to go.  Once it's finally done correctly,
I get the expected results, no surprises.

> (Although nothing in the documentaton suggests this!)

There's a LOT missing from the fdisk and disklabel documentation.
(I'm still stumped on the cylinder alignment business, but I'll wait
for that until I get back to old scsi drives on sparc -- the next
project.)

Thanks for all your help.  I think I've made some real progress.

-- 
henry nelson
  WWW_HOME=http://yuba(dot)ne(dot)jp/(tilde)home/