Suggestion for the fdisk(8) manual page...

[Ondřej Majerech]

On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:40:48 +0100, Modulok <modulok at gmail.com> wrote:

> List,
>
> Just a suggestion:
>
> In the 'Bugs' section of the 'fdisk(8)' man page, could we get a note
> that informs users that fdisk is kind of... broken and obsolete?
> Something like:
>
> "fdisk is slowly being replaced by gpart(8). fdisk may not work
> correctly. If you see errors such as "fdisk: Class not found", use
> gpart(8) instead."
>
> That way, when you're confronted by the initially mysterious, "fdisk:
> Class not found" error, you don't waste tons of time double and triple
> checking slice table syntax and what not. Maybe even right at the top
> of the man page. Yes, it bit me today. Looking through the archives,
> apparently I'm not the only one.
>
> Thanks!
> -Modulok-

Wow..  I wish I knew there *was* any gpart at the first place!

I'm still kinda new to FreeBSD -- been using it since 7.0-RELEASE.  Every  
time I had to make some changes to my partition table, I looked WTF-ly at  
fdisk manpage, then grabbed a Fedora live CD and made the changes from  
there.  gpart looks like something that would do what I needed to do and  
would not require me to wonder if I got some obscure syntax right when  
modifying my partitions.

So I'd like to second your suggestion: Mentioning gpart in man fdisk  
would've definitely saved my time.

~ Ondra