Subject: bin/12954: disklabel manpages are unclear on allowable filesystem types
To: None <gnats-bugs@gnats.netbsd.org>
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 05/16/2001 01:34:58
>Number:         12954
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       disklabel manpages are unclear on allowable filesystem types
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    bin-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Tue May 15 22:34:00 PDT 2001
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     John Hawkinson
>Release:        -current of 22 April 2001
>Organization:
MIT
>Environment:
	
System: NetBSD zorkmid.mit.edu 1.5U NetBSD 1.5U (ZORKMID-$Revision: 1.10 $) #94: Sun Apr 22 16:38:31 EDT 2001 jhawk@zorkmid.mit.edu:/usr/local/netbsd-current/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/ZORKMID i386


>Description:
	The disklabel documentation is really unclear on what the allowable
filesystem types are. If one reads the [abysmal] disklabel(8), one eventually
finds that one might look at disklabel(5), and buried in the midst of
disklabel(5) is some C code:

   #ifdef  FSTYPENAMES
     static const char *const fstypenames[] = {
             "unused",
             "swap",
             "Version 6",
 ...

This makes it really hard for new users to find the fileystem types.
>How-To-Repeat:
	Try to figure out what to use for a Linux ext2 filesystem. It's
even more confusing because the right value apparently has a space in it:

             "Linux Ext2",

Apparently disklabel(8) actually deals with it, but it's pretty
non-obvious.
>Fix:
	I'm not sure what would be best. Perhaps:
a) disklabel should provide a list of acceptable types when it indicates
that a given filesystem type is invalid.
b) disklabel(8) should perhaps list them explicitly
c) disklabel(5) should be far more clear, and not just C source code.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: