From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Nov 28 16:59:50 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mail.wgate.com (mail.wgate.com [38.219.83.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D28737B400 for ; Tue, 28 Nov 2000 16:59:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from jesup.eng.tvol.net ([10.32.2.26]) by mail.wgate.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2650.21) id WVAK2QMX; Tue, 28 Nov 2000 19:59:44 -0500 Reply-To: Randell Jesup To: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group Cc: Randell Jesup , Kenneth W Cochran , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Removal of Disklabel References: <200011290032.eAT0W4w16795@cwsys.cwsent.com> From: Randell Jesup Date: 28 Nov 2000 20:06:02 -0500 In-Reply-To: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group's message of "Tue, 28 Nov 2000 16:31:49 -0800" Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group writes: >> Before you start, you should look at the updates to disklabel I've >> submitted to Warner Losh for checkin. While they don't change the evil >> UI, they do greatly expand the flexibility of how to specify partition >> sizes and positions, and also considerably increase error checking >> (including for minor things like overlapping partitions). > >Overlapping partitions are perfectly legal. Of course you cannot >simultaneously use overlapping partitions, but you can set up a disktab >entry to create overlapping partitions and alternatively initialise the >partitions you wish to use, e.g you can define overlapping partitions >in the label, yet only use combinations of partitions that you require >at the the time. Evi Nemeth explains the rational behind this in her >system administration books. Mayhaps they're legal - but I think they're also evil and very dangerous, not to mention confusing. In any case, the updates to disklabel don't disallow them, but they do warn you that the partitions overlap. >If you want to look at UI's, Compaq Tru64-UNIX has an excellent disk >partitioning UI, with slider bars and warnings about overlapping >partitions -- a very polished application. The problem is that it >requires X. An X based install might be nice, however I think it's >hardly worth the effort. IMO this would be a value add for commercial >product, e.g. BSDi. Personally I'd LOVE more polish in sysinstall/etc. They're a bloody pain in the arse to use, and quite non-intuitive, even for someone who's been usign Unix for 16 years. -- Randell Jesup, Worldgate Communications, ex-Scala, ex-Amiga OS team ('88-94) rjesup@wgate.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message