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From: rhh@ct.picker.com (Randall Hopper)
Message-Id: <199609181239.IAA13016@elmer.ct.picker.com>
Subject: Re: fdisk changes, anyone?
To: darrylo@hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com (Darryl Okahata)
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 08:39:13 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199609160712.AA113897963@hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com> from "Darryl Okahata" at Sep 16, 96 00:12:43 am
Reply-To: rhh@ct.picker.com
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 |     I've just mangled fdisk such that partitioning information can now
 |be specified via an optional config file.  I've been needing a way to
 ...
 |Would anyone be interested in the changes (including man page updates)?
 |Should I submit an enhancement request (w/patches), or should I consign
 |these changes to the mists of time?  ;-)
 |

     I'd be very interested in this.  Sure would beat the fdisk << ! ... !
references I've got in my scripts -- much less dangerous.  I have to
manually recheck these scripts when I upgrade my system.

     To Jordan's point about specifying the partition info using
command-line options (to avoid having to use a temp file with this method),
a compromise solution might be to be able to specify a "-" on the command
line for the config file path to allow the config file to be read from
stdin.

     What you have would definitely be useful.  Please submit.  One nice
future that occurs to me might be able to specify the partition info for
multiple disk configurations in a single config file, each one identified
by a name, analogous to the way disktab is used (e.g. fbsd-ufs-zip-disk:,
fbsd-ufs-1.44flop:, etc.).  I think it'd be a plus for usability to
eventually deliver an /etc file for this updated fdisk with the more
commonly used partitioning schemes for common media (removable in
particular) in-place, so the user just needs to do:

        fdisk -c fbsd-ufs-zip-disk

This'd make my fdisk/disklabel/newfs script for creating UFS ZIP disks very
small and simple.

Randall Hopper
rhh@ct.picker.com