Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 22:28:55 +1000 (EST) From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@xcllnt.net> Subject: Re: proposed bsdlabel patch Message-ID: <20040330214400.X10192@gamplex.bde.org> In-Reply-To: <20040330105705.GB92824@ip.net.ua> References: <20040329163926.A38109@xorpc.icir.org> <20040330005013.GA53546@ns1.xcllnt.net> <20040329234212.A72990@xorpc.icir.org><40692D02.5090700@freebsd.org> <20040330003408.A75276@xorpc.icir.org> <406938A1.9030507@freebsd.org> <20040330105705.GB92824@ip.net.ua>
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On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 11:06:41AM +0200, Hartmut Brandt wrote:
> > Not really. rm has no magic that interpretes da0 as /dev/da0. If you
> > happen to have a file da0 in your current directory (let's say the saved
> > disklabel or so) and specify just da0 to disklabel expecting that it
> > will work on /dev/da0 it will unexpecedly clobber your file. Such
> > automatisms make things not easier, but more complex - you have to
> > remember them. You need to get the habit to do ls -l before you do
> > disklabel da0. I'd say keep the '-f' option, that'll make things clearer.
I agree. The conversions are hard to remember and different for almost
every utility that perpetrates them. I never have problems with this
though. Clobbering real disks is easy enough that I usually do much
more than ls to check that I'm writing to the disk that I want.
> FWIW, fdisk(8), diskinfo(8), fsck_ffs(8) (and probably others)
> prefer the file in the current directory to a /dev entry.
The misbehaviour of fsck_ffs is actually more complicated:
- In 4.4BSD (where fsck_ffs was plain fsck), fsck actually operated
on the specified pathname.
- Merging NetBSD's fsck driver gave some or all of the following
conversions:
--- The driver part (fsck) adds a /dev prefix if the specified pathname
doesn't contain _any_ slashes, so ./foo works right, unlike for
bsdlabel.
--- The fsck_ffs part starts by adding a /dev prefix under the same
condition as fsck, so ./foo (almost) works right.
--- If fsck_fsck can't stat the file under its (possibly) converted
pathname, then it (fsck_ffs) prints a message and continues with the
specified pathname. This causes various misbehaviours, e.g.,
duplicate error messages.
Bruce
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