Subject: GPT guids
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Jeff Rizzo <riz@tastylime.net>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 12/16/2007 09:28:32
Now that I'm doing my semiannual playing around with wedges and gpt and
all that, I'm thinking about the fact that NetBSD doesn't yet have any
GUIDs assigned specifically for our use - we're using FreeBSD's UFS ID
by default.

Now, I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about this as some folks that I
hope will pipe up in this discussion, but re-using FreeBSD's ID seems
like we're just asking to duplicate the whole "MBR partition type 165 vs
169" situation.  Unless I'm very much mistaken, our UFS isn't exactly
like FreeBSD's - plus, there's times when you want to be able to tell
for certain what OS is on a disk without having to look at its contents.

In addition, we need to assign numbers for some other types - RAID, LFS
- others folks can think of?  I think we should do something along the
lines of what FreeBSD did - pick a base GUID to indicate "NetBSD", and
increment one of the digits for various types therein.

Thoughts?

+j