From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 20 18:42:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA04731 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 18:42:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rover.village.org (rover.village.org [204.144.255.49]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA04722 for ; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 18:42:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rover.village.org [127.0.0.1] by rover.village.org with esmtp (Exim 1.60 #1) id 0wJ84k-00012z-00; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 19:39:26 -0600 To: Terry Lambert Subject: Re: disklabel -- owner? Cc: jbryant@tfs.net, bakul@torrentnet.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:42:20 PDT." <199704201942.MAA08401@phaeton.artisoft.com> References: <199704201942.MAA08401@phaeton.artisoft.com> Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 19:39:26 -0600 From: Warner Losh Message-Id: Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk : > second, never assume that i want your partition info, i may partition : > my disks differently... such things as m-o disks to zip disks may be : > safe assumptions, but on true hard disks, i want seperate /, /tmp, : > /var, /home, /usr, and sometimes seperate /usr/local... and the sizes : > i pick for each may indeed be different from the sizes you pick... In message <199704201942.MAA08401@phaeton.artisoft.com> Terry Lambert writes: : I partially agree. : : I believe there should be no disk database whatsoever... there should : be a "rule of thumb" based on memory size to pick a default size for : swap, and another fuzzy limit for picking seperate or common root/usr, : and another for picking "additional slices". Actually, one of the ideas that I had was an automatic "make these partitions reasonable for this disk" that people could use. The disktab stuff is a good set of default, but not the best. Of course the idea would be to say "gimme these defaults" and then "but I know I need 85M of /tmp rather than 20M, so steal that from the 'hog' partition ala sunos." These are just some initial working thoughts. One of the problems is that you can't have more than 8 partitions in a slice, and two of those are stolen. /, swap, /usr, /var, /tmp, and one other and you are out. : The sector count information should be retrieved by ioctl()'ing the : device driver to get back a count, then applying the rule set to come : up with most of what disktab/other would have had in it anyway. You can get close with this. I'll be trying to do this. Right now the current disklabel program : Surely, there are rules of thumb for generating disktab entries, right? Should be. : > > - It should allow *moving* a partition or a slice. : > : > good idea, why not an extend or shrink utility too? : : For an existing FS? Because you would need to re-newfs the thing, : for one, unless you rewrote JFS (I have a part of a start on that; : the PPC host environment I'm using is AIX; it's not likely to be : more than read-only and "mostly" working any time soon). Not a : day at the beach. These are beyond the scope of what I care to do. : Extending is both less and more problematic. It's less because you : can pretty much safely do it, but it's more because once you do it, : you now have to unscrew cylinder group and other allocation policies : to prevent unequal fragmentation, etc.. Again, not a picnic. : : : > > - You may want to look at some DOS/Windows disk tools for ideas. : > : > well... unrm? how about a defragger? : : I think you'd probably need a "fragger" first, otherwise it will : never have anything to do and will die of boredom. 8-). I've seen several good ones. Heck, I've been talking to Jordan for years, on and off, about what I'd like to see. I'm finally getting P/O'd enough to do something about it. :-) Warner