newfs and mount vs. half-baked disks

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20031113064251.GB39616 at cirb503493.alcatel.com.au>, Peter Jeremy wri
tes:
>On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 09:56:14AM +0100, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>>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.
>
>How do you handle the situation when the master superblock on / is
>hosed and you need to find the filesystem parameters (in
>/etc/ufs.conf) before you can access /?

I usually take great care to always newfs / with default parameters,
because then I can use newfs -N /dev/ad0a to see where the superblocks
are to be found.

>If the BSD-style disklabels are going away, at least the root
>parameters need to be in the boot blocks or somewhere similar.

Sure, send a patch.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.