Why is 'disklabel'ng a new drive so difficult?

[illoai at gmail.com]

On 28/03/07, Marc G. Fournier <freebsd at hub.org> wrote:
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> Just bought a new WD SATA drive: WDC WD5000YS-01MPB1 09.02E09
>
> Tried to disklabel it, and it gives me all kinds of warnings when I look at it
> after running the disklabel:
>
>
> ganymede# bsdlabel -w ad4s1 auto
> ganymede# bsdlabel ad4s1c
> # /dev/ad4s1c:
> 8 partitions:
> #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
>   a: 976767986       79    unused        0     0
>   c: 976768002       63    unused        0     0         # "raw" part, don't
> edit
> partition a: partition extends past end of unit
> partition c: partition extends past end of unit
> bsdlabel: partition c doesn't start at 0!
> bsdlabel: An incorrect partition c may cause problems for standard system
> utilities
>
> Even if I try to use /stand/sysinstall to do the fdisk, the end result has
> 'issues' ...
>
> So, what is the generally accepted method of label'ng a new drive? :(

I think you have it correct (or "right" as they say).
When I:
% bsdlabel [da|ad]NsNc
those very error messages are horked up on _some_
drives.
To me
% bsdlabel [da|ad]NsN
has always been the correct method.

The drives which DO return the errors have partitions
newfs-ed with a non-default blocksize (-b 8192).  What
effect (or "impact" if you learnt English in a Zeppelin
over Italy in 1916) that may have is beyond me.

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