Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2024 15:47:32 -0800 (PST) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd-rwg@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> To: George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> Cc: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>, Ed Maste <emaste@FreeBSD.org>, FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: Removing fdisk and bsdlabel (legacy partition tools) Message-ID: <202401242347.40ONlWKZ099356@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> In-Reply-To: <CAKr6gn3bnfnJ9Xd%2BEqDsHh1pho4s4px3o4ewt0cMEckideZ0Pw@mail.gmail.com>
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> I would agree personally, to moving to ports (eg ports/sysutils) with > a DEPRECATED in the DESCR or something, or better yet a Make > invokation event to say "superceded, here is how to proceed against > advice") or something. They are totally useless as ports when your booted from install media and working from a standalone shell. These are the exact times you want things like fdisk and bsdlabel so you can figure out wtf is going on, and bsdinstall is NOT gona help you. I know there are a boat load of people that have built there own installers for VM's and stuff, running UFS and I bet you they are using MBR disks too. PLEASE do not kick these tiny little and very usable and pretty univeral (as far as I know ALL BSD's have fdisk and bsdlabel/disklabel) tools out of the base system. The world is NOT 2TB nvme drives with GPT, EFI and ZFS, yours might not be, but I am pretty certain I am not alone in this other world. > -G > > On Thu, Jan 25, 2024 at 3:30?AM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote: > > > > On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 8:45?AM Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org> wrote: > >> > >> MBR (PC BIOS) partition tables were historically maintained with > >> fdisk(8), but gpart(8) has long been the preferred method for working > >> with partition tables of all types. fdisk has been declared as > >> obsolete in the man page since 2015. Similarly BSD disklabels were > >> historically maintained with bsdlabel. It does not yet have a > >> deprecation notice - I have proposed a man page addition in > >> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D43563. > >> > >> I would like to disconnect these from the build, and subsequently > >> remove them. This is prompted by a recent bsdlabel bug report which > >> uncovered a longstanding buffer overflow in that tool. Effort is much > >> better focused on contemporary, maintained tools rather than > >> investigating issues in deprecated ones. Removing these tools would > >> happen in FreeBSD 15 only (no change in 14 or 13). > >> > >> Code review to disconnect fdisk: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D43575 > >> > >> Note that this effort is limited to these maintenance tools only - > >> there is no change to kernel or gpart support for MBR or BSD > >> disklablel partitioning. That said, MBR partitioning and BSD > >> disklabels are best considered legacy formats and should be avoided > >> for new installations, if possible. > >> > >> If anyone is using fdisk and/or bsdlabel rather than gpart I would > >> appreciate knowing what is preventing you from using the contemporary > >> tools. > > > > > > nanobsd's legacy.sh still is using disklabel in two spots. > > > > But one is to just do gpart create -s bsd and the other is to display it. Easy > > to fix, but even easier to delete legacy.sh entirely. It's not really needed any > > more and was a product of CHS addressing... Now that we use LBA, it's > > better to use the new embedded ones. Even at $WORK where we kinda > > use legacy, we replace the partitioning stuff with our own custom thing... > > > > Those are the only users in the tree, but not for long :) > > > > fdisk was good, but somewhere around the CHS -> LBA transition things > > got weird with it, and for really big disks there were reports of issues that > > I could never encounter when I set out to fix them... Most likely due to a > > mismatch in the CHS data and the LBA data being recorded in the MBR. > > The in-kernel gpart copes so much better. > > > > I wouldn't object to making these ports, but both these programs use 'sekret' > > bits from the kernel that might not remain exposed as we clean things up. > > Though the IOCTLs they do (or used to do) may no longer be relevant. It's > > been so long that I've forgotten.... > > > > Warner -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@freebsd.org
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