From owner-freebsd-platforms Tue Mar 19 23:32: 2 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-platforms@freebsd.org Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (critter.freebsd.dk [212.242.86.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4180737B41D; Tue, 19 Mar 2002 23:31:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g2K7Vj0M003819; Wed, 20 Mar 2002 08:31:45 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) To: Fred Clift Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-platforms@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: disklabel cross-platform compatability ideas... In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 19 Mar 2002 15:34:43 MST." <20020319150550.N17961-100000@vespa.dmz.orem.verio.net> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 08:31:45 +0100 Message-ID: <3818.1016609505@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-platforms@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In message <20020319150550.N17961-100000@vespa.dmz.orem.verio.net>, Fred Clift writes: >After doing all of my 'normal' fiddling with a new box I attached an >external disk case with two 9G viking II disks in it. The alpha box >replaced an ia32 box as a server in my home, and the disks had ufs >partitions on them. > >Turns you, and most of you probably already know this, that because of >partition table location differences between alpha and ia32 I couldn't >mount the disks. The disk label seemed to be invalid. It seems like >there must be more than just me that are affected by this problem. I'm busy with a project called "GEOM" right now, which will allow cross-platform recognition of the various disklabel formats (and more). Right now, in -current, you can recognized Solaris disklabels on an all platforms if you use the GEOM kernel option. I need to rewrite the BSD disklabel and MBR methods to be endian/ bytewidth agnostic, but then other platforms will be able to recognize those too. But that is only the first bit of your trouble, next problem is to read the actual filesystem, which might be of a different byteorder persuasion than you machine. NetBSD has added byteorder-agnostism into ufs/ffs but it is a major obfuscation of the code and it does not yet cover the snapshot code. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-platforms" in the body of the message