newfs and mount vs. half-baked disks

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20031108191433.J608 at gamplex.bde.org>, Bruce Evans writes:

>I don't use GEOM, so the label won't be going away for me.  Anyway, there
>is no dependency (the label is just one of the things that one might
>examine to recover a crashed disk), and any overaul by GEOM would have
>to duplicate the functionality of storing metadata about the superblocks
>somewhere outside the superblocks.

This is a very good example of where it is important to get your
terminology straight:  No sane "overhaul by GEOM" would implement
this in GEOM.  It could be hacked into various existing classes or
even done cleanly in its own class which is almost as silly.

>  (I actually store metadata about file
>systems in (backups of) disk files in /var/backups.  Normal backups
>provide inadequate backups of metadata.)

This is probably a much better idea than anything you said until now
on the subject.

It might not be a bad idea to store the relevant magics in a
/etc/ufs.conf file, but there are some details about device vs.
media/filesystem identification in particular in context of dynanic
devices to that must be worked out.

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