Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:03:58 -0800 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Advanced Format Drive ? Message-ID: <25559.1353017038@tristatelogic.com> In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211150844350.62459@wonkity.com>
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In message <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211150844350.62459@wonkity.com>,
Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 15 Nov 2012, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>> Well, given that newfs has been ``fixed'' so that its defaults will
>> Do The Right Thing with the latest generation of (4KB block) disks,
>> I for one would like to register my vote for fdisk and bsdlabel to
>> either (a) be likewise fixed so that they also will default to Doing
>> The Right Thing (with the current generation of disks) or else (b)
>> be removed from future releases, based on the fact that (apparently)
>> they are now so old that nobody cares about them anymore and/or that
>> their defaults, when (foolishly?) relied upon, are likely to produce
>> Bad Performance, aka Bad Behavior.
>
>It's legacy code, and that's always a tough call: update and lose the
>legacy, or leave it alone and increasingly less useful. Since gpart is
>available, there's little pressure to change fdisk or bsdlabel.
Well, I'll tell you seriously that I, for one, "didn't get the memo"
as the saying goes. Honestly, this discussion is the first time that
I personally ever heard that fdisk and/or bsdlabel were being relegated
to the dustbin of history. (But then again, I don't get out much, or
enough, it seems.)
Maybe the man pages should contain notes/warnings saying explicitly
"This tool is now depreciated in favor of gpart." What do you think?
Is that a suggestion worthy of a formal PR?
>> And also, please don't forget the other points I mentioned, i.e. that
>> the man page for fdisk makes several references to alignment on ``cylinder''
>> and/or ``head'' boundaries. Are those things even relavant anymore?
>> Have they been, anytime in the past 10+ years? (I am guessing that
>> there may be other similarly antiquated references to boundaries that
>> haven't been meaningful for a long long time also in the bdslabel man
>> page, although I confess that didn't even look.)
>
>I'd say closer to 20 years.
Um yea. That's probably closer to the mark. Sigh. Time flies when you're
having fun. (And they also like arrows, I'm told.)
>But again, it's that legacy thing. And
>with FreeBSD, the odds are pretty good that somebody is still running
>legacy hardware.
Yea, you are undoubtedly right about that.
I wonder... can FreeBSD still run on 386s?
I can envision a humorous boot-time message that somebody may see someday...
Sorry, FreeBSD cannot run on this hardware.
Please invest in something that was actually
manufactured this century (20xx).
:-)
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