New option for newfs(3) to make life with GEOM easier

[Yar Tikhiy]

On Sat, Sep 01, 2007 at 11:30:35AM +0200, Gergely CZUCZY wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 01, 2007 at 01:23:10PM +0400, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 01, 2007 at 08:13:07AM +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> 
> > 
> > > 2.  Why not simply allow the -s argument to newfs to be negative so
> > >     "-s -200" means "reserve 200 sectors" ?
> > 
> > A negative argument to -s has been invalid till now, so we propose
> > a new option for people to express their intentions explicitly.
> > Personally, I don't mind the "-s -200" syntax, but many people
> > consider overloaded arguments unintuitive and error-prone.
>
> I think this "-s <negative>" syntax is just fine. As far as
> the manual will mention this, there's no problem with it.
> Introducing a new exclusive option could result in people
> trying to use both at the same time :)

FWIW, the code proposed is robust to specifying both options and
has the following semanics: attemt to create the file system in the
first S sectors but make sure that there are at least R spare sectors
left at the end.  It's documented in the manpage patch. :-)

-- 
Yar