At 9:03 PM -0400 7/18/01, Todd Vierling wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Henry B. Hotz wrote:
>
>: newfs -O creates an "old" format ffs filesystem that is close enough
>: that fsck under the 1.5.1 installer can convert it without a lot of
>: complaints,
>
>The words "convert it" come to mind as a possible stickling point in the
>next section:

I should have been more clear.  I only ran fsck -f, I did not use -c. 
I do not remember the errors that were reported.

>: but when I go back to MacOS X it no longer recognizes it as "old" and
>: won't fsck it without complaining about the directory sizes.
>
>Perhaps MacOS X doesn't like the flavor of 4.4BSD format filesystem that
>NetBSD uses?

Someone else (was it here or on darwin-development?) said that OSX 
uses the NextStep flavor of FFS, which is different in only a couple 
of size parameters, but *is* different.

>You *can* use an older 4.3BSD format ffs under NetBSD without converting it;
>you just have to avoid doing "fsck -c".  You may lose some things, like
>large files (>2GB) and 32-bit uid/gid, but you gain compatibility.  It might
>be useful for a home directory partition or somesuch.
>
>There are four levels for the filesystem, too (see NetBSD fsck_ffs(8))--0
>through 3.  If MacOS X is happy with levels 1 or 2, you can probably live
>with it just fine.

I'll have to research which level corresponds to MacOS X's "-O".


Cross my heart, strike me dead, stick a lobster on my head.
John Crichton -- Farscape, 6/15/01
h.b.hotz@jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz@oxy.edu