From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 20 06:26:37 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA20834 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 06:26:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chai.plexuscom.com (chai.plexuscom.com [207.87.46.100]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA20829 for ; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 06:26:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chai.plexuscom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chai.plexuscom.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA09993; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 09:27:58 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199704201327.JAA09993@chai.plexuscom.com> To: Warner Losh Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: disklabel -- owner? In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 19 Apr 1997 23:41:54 MDT." Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 09:27:58 -0400 From: Bakul Shah Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Heck, I'd be happy to try to rewrite the whole fdisk/disklabel junk > into a nice, easy to use script. sysinstall is OK, but it isn't as > nice as I'd like. Is there a need for this, or are people generally > happy with the tools we have? Doing it (mostly) _right_ is going to take time as you have to deal with a lot of low level details.... Or else it can end up being just different rather than an easy to use, idiot-proof program to handle all your low level disk needs. Some ideas: - Such a program should also handle newfs, disk scanning (to check for bad blocks), update some parameters such as ARRE on scsi mode pages etc. - It should try to infer some common things by looking at disk blocks. Sort of like what file() does. - It should do some sanity checks. For IDE disks it should cooperate with the BIOS in so far as possible. I never want to see an `operating system not found' message right after an install! - It should *explain* various actions and consequences of such actions. A built-in FAQ would be handy. - It should allow you a practice run on a normal file. It should also leave an audit trail so you can later try to figure out what you did. It should also allow you to `replay' and modify a previous run. - It should be able to make use of a disk database -- not disktab but something that describes the properties of various disks. Sort of like a termcap, MIB or PPD. - It should be easy to extend as disk manufacturers are going to add some new kind of disk sooner or later, which will require adding some code goop. - It should allow *moving* a partition or a slice. - You may want to look at some DOS/Windows disk tools for ideas. May be what is needed is a frontend script that calls a number of low level tools, each good at one thing. -- bakul