From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 1 14:19:35 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: hackers@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8B639BD5 for ; Sun, 1 Jun 2014 14:19:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mho-01-ewr.mailhop.org (mho-03-ewr.mailhop.org [204.13.248.66]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 606D9205C for ; Sun, 1 Jun 2014 14:19:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from c-24-8-230-52.hsd1.co.comcast.net ([24.8.230.52] helo=damnhippie.dyndns.org) by mho-01-ewr.mailhop.org with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Wr6bl-000Owx-MZ; Sun, 01 Jun 2014 14:19:33 +0000 Received: from [172.22.42.240] (revolution.hippie.lan [172.22.42.240]) by damnhippie.dyndns.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id s51EJTZu001533; Sun, 1 Jun 2014 08:19:30 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from ian@FreeBSD.org) X-Mail-Handler: Dyn Standard SMTP by Dyn X-Originating-IP: 24.8.230.52 X-Report-Abuse-To: abuse@dyndns.com (see http://www.dyndns.com/services/sendlabs/outbound_abuse.html for abuse reporting information) X-MHO-User: U2FsdGVkX18SuxCkIIVpYXP1FROQvIKv Subject: Re: fdisk(8) vs gpart(8), and gnop From: Ian Lepore To: John-Mark Gurney In-Reply-To: <20140601020053.GR43976@funkthat.com> References: <20140601004242.GA97224@bewilderbeast.blackhelicopters.org> <20140601020053.GR43976@funkthat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 08:19:29 -0600 Message-ID: <1401632369.20883.51.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.1 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, "Michael W. Lucas" X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 14:19:35 -0000 On Sat, 2014-05-31 at 19:00 -0700, John-Mark Gurney wrote: > Michael W. Lucas wrote this message on Sat, May 31, 2014 at 20:42 -0400: > > $SUBJECT have been two contentious points of discussion in private > > mail, Twitter, the BSDCan bar track, and random people passing on the > > street. I was very surprised at the number of knowledgeable people who > > have different ideas on this and argue about it at length. > > > > I'm hoping to verify what seems to be correct. > > > > First, is fdisk EVER necessary? I *believe* that gpart's '-a 4k' > > handles all alignment issues for the 512B/4KB sector issues. If you > > gpart's -a will not properly align MBR's slices due to enforced CHS... Maybe this is naive, but... can't we just *fix* that? For the longest time geom would warn about "geometry does not match label" that had something to do with different parts of the code calculating different CHS values. Eventually it was decided to remove the unactionable message, and my vague memory is that the justification was basically "because CHS is meaningless to geom and modern BIOSen." If there's some "it would cause problems on this ancient hardware that only 3 people in the world use" (I'm usually one of those people -- we support some old equipment in the field at $work), then maybe there could be a flag that enables the old CHS alignment behavior. -- Ian