Subject: Re: GPT support still needed?
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se>
List: tech-kern
Date: 06/07/2007 19:00:02
tor 2007-06-07 klockan 18.37 skrev der Mouse:
> >> Just so everyone is clear -- wedges is what NetBSD is adopting
> >> (albeit slowly) for the in-memory representation and user
> >> presentation of disk partitions.  They will be used for all on-disk
> >> partition table formats.
> > So if they will be used for all on-disk partition table formats, and
> > they are used for the in-memory representation, in which way are they
> > separate from each other?
> 
> I think you misunderstood.
> 
> Try "They [wedges] will be used for [the in-core version of, and user
> presentation of,] all on-disk partition table formats".

Ah. Yes, you're right. I misunderstood Jason's meaning here.

Well, to reply to his comments then, I really don't care what structure
the system is storing the data in-memory. I would certainly hope that it
would be a very simplistic and efficient form, but that's not anything
I'd waste too much time arguing about. I think it speaks for itself. And
of course it needs to be flexible to some extent. We don't want those
old days back. :-) But the in-memory structure can be filled in at boot
time (or when the disk comes online) and after that, we'd be happy.

The format of the data on the disk is what I'm commenting on. Complex
structures and formats makes for using lots of space, and lots of CPU
power to figure out how to make sense of it. And there are more ways of
getting it wrong.

That's my concerns. But, as I said. I'm a guy who likes to run machines
that most here would toss on the scrap heap right away. (Right now I'm
doing some work on the VAX-8650 here. Might be a candidate for the
physically largest machine running NetBSD. But doing a build of just
tools and kernel is probably going to get close to a week by now...)

	Johnny