Re: disklabel

["Markus Illenseer" <markus%tiger.teuto.de@localhost>]

Hume Smith wrote:
> - so: why *is* there a disklabel command in NetBSD/Amiga at all, never
> mind a different from the one you compile from src10? - why do the
> manpages talk about having to disklabel?

 There is a purpose for disklabel even though it might not be usefull to
hard drive and partitions on them:  You can generate fileimages and use
them with /dev/vnd0 (see man vnconfig), you might use disklabel to
partition them - because you are unable to partition them with HdToolBox...

 The  main  reason might simply be lazyness of course - why remove a binary
from the Amiga distribution tree if it might be usefull - if only for
error-messages.

> - why does newfs make complaints hinting it wants disklabels, and can't
> write its own, etc.?

 Newfs does use disklabel - those which are sitting in the RAM created by
the kernel.  The IO-Routine to write disklabels has been removed, thats
all.  A future version might be able to write them - and write a new RDB as
well!

> there've been grumbings in newgroups lately that NetBSD isn't as easy to
> admin as linux; i never guessed the docs and software load were actually
> conspiring *against* me.  that was frigging dangerous - in all the
> diddling with disklabel, i slipped once and wrecked the partition scheme
> on my main drive.  (miraculously, i only had to restore data in the
> Amiga partitions.)

 Same can happen for any Unix. 

-- 
Markus Illenseer