bsdlabel messages? (resolved)

[Jay O'Brien]

I asked about error messages displayed by disklabel; after much on-
line searching, I found that several others reported the same problem; 
I couldn't find that any of the others found a resolution. I've found 
an answer; it may well be an oversight in bsdlabel and it's MAN file.

Example error messages are as follows: 
    partition a: partition extends past end of unit
    partition b: offset past end of unit
    bsdlabel: partition c doesn't start at 0!
    bsdlabel: partition c doesn't cover the whole unit!
    bsdlabel: An incorrect partition c may cause problems for 
              standard system utilities

Here's the story for anyone else that may run into the problem. 

The command 'disklabel ad0' worked fine in 4.10 using disklabel. 
The same command or 'bsdlabel ad0' doesn't work for me in 5.3 using 
bsdlabel; instead, I get a "no valid label found" message.

Referring to MAN BSDLABEL, I found that it says to use the command 
'bsdlabel disk', where "disk represents the disk in question, and may 
be in the form da0 or /dev/da0." Using the da0 form didn't work, so I 
arbitrarily tried 'bsdlabel ad0s1a' and got the expected display plus 
an additional 17 error lines. 

Had I read farther into MAN BSDLABEL, I would have found the example 
'bsdlabel da0s1'. That form provides the expected results, without the 
extra error lines. 

Only the argument 'ad1s1' gives the expected results when using 5.3's 
bsdlabel. Using 'ad1s1a' or 'ad1s1c' returns the expected results and 
adds troubling additional error lines. Using 'ad0' alone fails.

Disklabel, in 4.10, seems more tolerant of user input, displaying the 
correct report when the disk, slice, or any valid partition is used as 
the "disk" argument.  Bsdlabel, however, works differently.

If this issue was created to get this new user to experiment and to 
Read The Freebsd MANual, it worked. Whew.

Jay O'Brien 
Rio Linda, California, USA