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Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 01:52:47 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199707211552.BAA19147@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: jkh@time.cdrom.com, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au
Subject: Re: /boot.foo madness
Cc: bde@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

>The files should be installed into /usr/mdec along with the
>prototypical bootblocks, and written to the 'a' partition of the disk
>being labelled by 'disklabel -B' and anything that purports to be
>compatible with it, if they are not already there.  Possibly an

Certainly not.  disklabel(8) writes boot blocks; it has no knowledge
file systems.  Whatever writes the files has to handle the following
cases:

- bare disk with no file system: optionally newfs the file system to
  reduce to the next case
- disk with file system: optionally fsck and mount it to reduce to
  the next case; later unmount it.
- mounted file system: just install -C the help file and write whatever
  is necessary to the config files (nothing by default).

Bruce