On 06/22/2012 01:19 PM, David Brownlee wrote:
One of the reasons that it is kept around is that this is the only source of information of disk geometry on some of the disks. There are also clone disks that usually present themselves as a DEC disk with a totally different layout.vax is the only port with its own disktab (everyone else has a copy with just one "floppy|3.5in High Density Floppy" entry), while vax has all the rx, ra and a selection of historical interest (ahh, Fujitsu Eagles). Given the current disklabel tools do not really need disktab, and more importantly the partition values are irrelevant for modern use, is there any point in keeping what amounts to misleading data? Of anything I could see some sense in keeping the (single partition) floppy entries. what do people think?
Back in 4.3BSD you had to generate in the correct disk layout in the driver; see diskpart -p :-)
Moreover, the disks couldn't be auto-sized since there were disks that would break themselves if the heads were moved too far in (beyond the last cylinder).
These are the historical reasons. In reality, I assume that there are very few people in the world (besides me) that still has Massbus disks around :-)
-- Ragge