From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 15 12:03:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id MAA20441 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:03:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id MAA20402 for ; Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:01:50 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA04182; Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:47:02 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199701151947.MAA04182@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: mount -o async on a news servre To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:47:02 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "J Wunsch" at Jan 15, 97 00:33:24 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > > Btw., FreeBSD also re-reads the geometry later if needed. The number > > > presented at boot is only for convenience there. > > > > *Convenience*?!?!?! > > Yes, 99.5 % of all disks claimed by the `sd' driver are non-removable. > It's often convenient to remember that the number of blocks appeared > in the boot message (and thus, in /var/log/messages), for later > reference. > > I'm pitying you that you're among the remaining 0.5 %. :-) The only reason "it's often convenient" is that tools like disklabel don't ioctl() the device to ask it for the information. It's *stupid* to have the kernel print out information (if it prints it out, it knows the information) and then have to have it pass through a human (typing it back in) in some later tool. The only convenience served here is for those people who want to keep things like disklabelling and fdisking too complicated for the average user to add a disk without 5 or siz messages to -quests, -hackers, or -current. Which, of course, sucks. It is an (un)usability issue. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.