One thing I'd like to see was having disklabel be able to find out a
disk's geometry and write a default label like on Digital Unix (OSF/1).

On that system, 'disklabel -rw <disk> <type>' will write a label to any
disk, even if there is no label on the disk from before. Note that you
can specify anything for <type>, if you enter a valid name from the
/etc/disktab file then that entry is used. If not, disklabel probes the
drive for geometry and calculates "reasonable" partitions. When that's
done you can run 'disklabel -e' and modify the partitions to your
liking.

Maybe this scheme isn't possible on IDE drives, but it should be
possible to implement on SCSI drives?

Gunnar

--
Gunnar Helliesen   | Bergen IT Consult AS  | NetBSD/VAX on a uVAX II
Systems Consultant | Bergen, Norway        | '86 Jaguar Sovereign 4.2
gunnar@bitcon.no   | http://www.bitcon.no/ | '73 Mercedes 280 (240D)


>-----Original Message-----
>From:	Bill Squier [SMTP:groo@guinness.cs.stevens-tech.edu]
>Sent:	Friday, August 15, 1997 6:07 PM
>To:	prlw1@cam.ac.uk
>Cc:	port-i386@NetBSD.ORG
>Subject:	Re: More than you.. suggestion 
>
>Heh.  You'd think that, wouldn't you.  The current discussion is about 
>disklabel being slightly broken.