[ Moving this over to tech-kern ... Whoever replies to this, please
  remove the port-i386 ... I'd like to cross-post to encourage
  port-i386'ers who aren't on tech-kern to get on tech-kern :-) --thorpej ]

On Tue, 6 Aug 1996 09:58:44 +0100 (BST) 
 David Brownlee <david@mono.org> wrote:

 > 	Some ports already use 'edlabel', which is much easier for a
 > 	novice than disklabel... space consideration on the miniroot
 > 	probably rule this out, but its a nice idea :)

The reason for edlabel is specifically for miniroot and ramdisk-root 
applications ... it's much smaller then disklabel.

However, due to limitations in the current disklabel subsystem, edlabel 
can't be used in bootstrapping environments on all ports (such as the 
hp300) and is unsufficient for dealing with special considerations of 
some ports (like the alpha and i386).

However, IMO, edlabel should stay simple ... all of the "special" cruft 
that's currently in disklabel(8) should go into the appropriate 
machine-dependent portions of the kernel, and the disklabel ioctl suite 
re-thought.

(HI SCOTT! :-)

Let me dig though the archives and re-post the mail I sent about this 
some months ago (gosh, almost a year, I guess...)

 -- save the ancient forests - http://www.bayarea.net/~thorpej/forest/ -- 
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
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