In message <20021220000754.A18539@vaasje.org>Frank van der Linden writes
>On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 03:04:59PM -0800, Jonathan Stone wrote:
>> Try mounting all the UFS filesystems in a FreeBSD partition sometime.
>> (no, mbrlabel does n't find them all).  Bill's proposal makes that
>> even harder than it is now.
>
>No it doesn't, Bill's proposal includes a utility that grovels the
>disk and *finds all partitions for you of all types* and then
>configures disk device nodes for them.

Frank, the part which says ``run a special userspace utility?''
is a big step *backwards*.

Try inserting an MBR-labelled CF into a USB CF reader.  Or inserting
the same CF into an IDE laptop slot, via a CF-to-PCMCIA mechanical adaptor.

You're saying NetBSD users will have to remember to run Bill's special
usespacer utility on each insertion?  Before they can even *see*
what's there to mount?  I dunno about you, but that strikes me as poor
engineering.

Now I'm not suggesting we put the whole shebang into the kernel.  That
doesn't seem worth it.  But putting *everything* (except the minimum
needed to boot) into userspace is, I think, going too far in the other
direction.