Re: spurious DIAGNOSTIC message "no disk label"

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

gdt%lexort.com@localhost (Greg Troxel) writes:

>I think it's wrong to print out messages like that because DIAGNOSTIC is
>defined.   DIAGNOSTIC is supposed to just add KASSERT (was panic, long
>ago) about conditions that must be true unless the kernel is buggy.

The specific disklabel warnings are printed unconditionally by most drivers.
It's only restricted to DIAGNOSTIC in the common subroutine shared by a
few drivers now.

Saying that, DIAGNOSTIC is also used to gate kernel warning messages
in other places. Not everthing is a fatal assertion.

>Separately, given that there's no rule that all disks must have labels,
>it seems wrong of the kernel to print this.

The kernel prints many errors, wether it's I/O errors, messages
about corrupted disklabels or messages about missing ones.
Not printing messages about missing ones seems to be newer behaviour.

I'm not sure wether disks without labels could be used at all
in 4.3bsd. But some data kept there was probably vital for those
drivers that supported labels.

-- 
-- 
                                Michael van Elst
Internet: mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."