bsdlabel partiton c error message on new install

[Ulf Lilleengen]

On tir, okt 21, 2008 at 10:42:06am +0100, andys wrote:
> Hi Ulf, 
> 
>   thanks a lot for your answer, previously I'd asked this question on the 
> freebsd-questions list and someone suggested asking it here as they didnt 
> know the answer, however I did get pretty much 2 responces telling me to 
> reinstall the OS!! :S 
> 
> For example I had this answer: 
> 
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-October/184617.htm 
> l 
> 
> So I assume you would disagree with this and the other person who advised me 
> this was a serious error? And if this actually isnt a problem, does bsdlabel 
> need to be updated (and the man page) to reflect the fact this can be seen 
> on a healthy system? 
> 
Well, this depends really on if you did this by purpose or if it was created
this way by fdisk. There are many factors which can influence this, since it
is not necessary something done by the system itself (I really doubt that the
label size will change without the user being notified if the user did not
make any such request, but then again, perhaps it should be checked in the
utilities).

If the disklabels were shortened after file system creation and the
filesystem really expects a larger label, you might be in trouble (when you
require the filesystem to do something involving the provider size which in
this case might be a slice which have changed size, you might have trouble).

You should perhaps do some testing with fsck and see if it complaints. Or
perhaps find out the real size that UFS expects (I am not really sure how).
If it is the same as the current label size, you are safe.

-- 
Ulf Lilleengen