[Bug 236323] [mkimg] Allow specifying (minimum) partition table size where applicable

bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org
Wed Mar 6 15:40:58 UTC 2019


https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=236323

            Bug ID: 236323
           Summary: [mkimg] Allow specifying (minimum) partition table
                    size where applicable
           Product: Base System
           Version: CURRENT
          Hardware: Any
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Severity: Affects Some People
          Priority: ---
         Component: bin
          Assignee: bugs at FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: marcel at FreeBSD.org

By default, mkimg(1) creates a disk image that uses a partition table size that
is large enough to hold the partitions given to mkimg(1). Rounding of the
number of partition entries, as implemented for bin/236238, is possible where
it makes sense but does not structurally provide a way to make sure there are
free partitions.

Arguably, the -p option can be used to add a few empty partitions, but in the
GPT case this gets painful if the user really desires a GPT partition table
that has the default number of partition entries in it. The default number is
128, requiring 128 -p options, of which more than 100 are for padding purposes
only.

The APM scheme has a similar problem in that each partition entry is in its own
sector. Once the disk image has be created and the first sector of the first
partition is adjacent to the last sector of the partition table, no more
partitions can be added.

And that's fundamentally the point of this bug: provide a way to make sure that
either
1) the number of entries can be specified, or
2) the number of extra entries can be specified.

It's not clear which approach works better as a generic solution given that it
won't apply to some schemes like MBR.

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