> The sun disklabel splits the disk up on cylinder boundaries, so any
> partial cylinder at the end of the disk cannot be used.

This is actually not true.  Sun disklabels store partition start points
as cylinder[%] numbers, so a partition not beginning on a cylinder
boundary cannot be represented.  But they store sizes as *sector*
counts; there is nothing preventing a partition from starting on a
cylinder boundary and extending to include a partial cylinder at the
end of the disk (or elsewhere, for that amtter).  Indeed, I routinely
do include a trailing partial cylinder in my Sun labels.  (I also
usually set nhead=32 and nsect=64, giving me 1MB cylinders, since on
modern disks the reasons for the label knowing the geometry are mostly
inapplicable anyway.)

[%] Where "cylinder" is defined according to the sect/track and
    track/cyl values in the label, which may or may not match any part
    of the real disk.

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