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Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 16:50:39 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com>
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To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org
Subject: Issue with 'bsdlabel' --- program and documentation are inconsistent
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I'm not going to attempt to say which is 'wrong' <wry grin>, but I can state
authoritatively that they *don't* agree with each other.  <sigh>

I'm using the 7.2 RELEASE, as downloaded from the freebsd U.S. 'ftp mirror 4' 
on 9/30/2009. 

Per the manpage there is a '-f {filename}' command-line option for the forms
of command invocation that write a label (e.g. the '-w' flag) to the drive.

All attempts to use '-f' result in a 'syntax error' complaint and program abort.

Took me _quite_ a while to figure out that "-R' was what I needed to write a
manually created volume label to the drive.

Comment:  '-w -f {filename}' does seem more _intuitive_ to me, in contrast to
'-R' -- regardless of whether one is 'restoring' a disk label, or simply 
comitting a hand-crafted one to the disk.

That said, regardless of whether the program is changed to match the 
documentation, or the docs are changed to match the program, the two _do_ 
need to be brought into agreement.