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To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
References: <1112632713.71324.52.camel@buffy.york.ac.uk>
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    from "Poul-Henning Kamp" at "Mon, 04 Apr 2005 17:13:43 +0000"
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 16:28:32 +1000
From: Stephen McKay <smckay@internode.on.net>
cc: Andrey Chernov <ache@nagual.pp.ru>
cc: current@freebsd.org
cc: Stephen McKay <smckay@internode.on.net>
Subject: Re: Can't change partition table anymore 
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On Monday, 4th April 2005, "Poul-Henning Kamp" wrote:

>In message <1112632713.71324.52.camel@buffy.york.ac.uk>, Gavin Atkinson writes:
>
>>We're talking
>>about people who should know what they are doing (they have root, after
>>all), entering commands which they expect to work...
>
>Sorry, I disagree.
>
>This was true when root was Ken, Dennis and Brian.
>
>Today root is Tom, Dick and Harry and they need sensible padding.

I appreciate your concern for novice system administrators.  On the other
hand, if you add restrictions to what I can do with *my* system in order to
make novices safer and do not give me a simple and *well documented* way to
disable this padding, I will curse you loudly to all comers.

Features such as this feel like quicksand when you are fighting them.  The
more you struggle the more frustrated you become and the deeper you sink.
Eventually the pain of using the "padded" software is so great you just
delete it and go elsewhere.

Stephen.

PS Setting debugging flags to an undocumented value so that my system
works correctly is not what I'm after.