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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!ns.saard.net!news.camtech.com.au!calypso.bns.com.au!not-for-mail From: mike@calypso.bns.com.au (Michael Talbot-Wilson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD support [was Re: God Damn partition crap!] Date: 31 Mar 1996 19:49:53 +0930 Organization: Calypso & That Jazz Lines: 42 Message-ID: <4jlm89$7bm@calypso.bns.com.au> References: <4hqav8$kmo@nntp.interaccess.com> <3140F2B6.41C67EA6@freebsd.org> <4i1qp4$bmj@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <4i50q6$64i@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4i727m$1hl@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <4j0mhb$r6i@calypso.bns.com.au> <31559EE7.59E2B600@FreeBSD.org> <4ja7fp$b6h@hole.sdsu.edu> <31595019.59E2B600@FreeBSD.org> <4jbvue$fdl@hole.sdsu.edu> <4jfhlv$kt1@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: calypso.bns.com.au X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #3 Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> writes: >The problem with disks is that disk management is a >fundamentally hard problem. >When designing disk managemnt software, you must make a trade >between implementational complexity and complexity of use. >...... >I can brief you in detail on what needs to be written to solve >the complexity problem, but be forewarned that the tasks are >not trivial. The three potential soloutions are: >...... >With the BIOS geometry information available to the kernel, >it is possible to generalize and abstract the entire >parittioning process (in fact, I have a YACC and LEX >grammar that does precisely that, which I am willing to >give you -- it won't do you any good unless you tackle >problem #1 or #2 first... and they are hard problems). >With such a general tool in hand, it is possible to front >end the tool with an "idiot menu" or even a GUI, which will >communicate with the tool in order to implement a simplistic >user interface. Being the original idiot, may I respectfully ask why this seems so difficult in FreeBSD but so simple (to idiots) in Linux? Is there a penalty, e.g. in terms of disk performance, resulting from the Linux method? Does Linux use MS-DOS partitions in a way that FreeBSD disdains to do? Am I deluding myself in thinking that Linux does not have this problem which looms large in FreeBSD, in that it has two independently-developed fdisk programs that work? I grant that this is possible - e.g. the original Linux fdisk is more restricted than the new one, which may possibly be more restricted than that of FreeBSD. Perhaps (I haven't personally tried) "fdisk sdb" does not even work? Yet others seem to post on their multi-disk systems, and the only problem I remember seeing was that of some idiots who used the new fdisk in command line mode carelessly and blew away their disks. No-one has suggested that it doesn't work.