Am I getting too old

[Mike.]

On 1/22/2014 at 4:18 PM Olivier Nicole wrote:

|Hi,
|
|in the old times (FreeBSD 8) it took me 5 minutes to partition
a disk
|for a test machine: create a couple of MS DOS partitions,
install the
|MBR, create FreeBSD partitions, done. It used to be working
easily,
|efficiently and reliably.
|
|Now it had been one day since I tried to reproduce that with
FreeBSD
|9, not to avail: I always end up with messaged saying things
like
|invalid partition, or stuff like that.
|
|What was the rational behind the decision of breaking something
that
|used to work fine (that had been working fine for over 10
years) and
|replace it with something that is ugly, unfriendly (you have to
give
|some types to the partitions, but nowhere is it written what
type is
|allowed or not) and that is not working?
|
|Oh maybe if I choose to go all by default it will work, but I
don't
|want the default, I want to be allowed to make my own choices
easily.
|
|Best regards
|
|Olivier
 =============

I had sentiments similar to yours a couple of months ago, except
I had been using FreeBSD since around version 4.

Except for a (imo, stupid) design decision that allows metadata
conflict between gpart and gmirror in some instances, I learned
to like using the gtools suite.

I did take the time to install FreeBSD on a spare computer, and
use and learn the new way of doing things.  I found that step to
be important because examples for the gsuite are not as common
as examples for the older way of doing things.

I also found out that the disk you are working on must be clean
of any old metadata that may be lurking on it.  That was a big
source of frustration for me until I discovered that it was the
old metadata that was fighting me.  I eventually wrote a script
that wipes the first few and the last few sectors of a disk
drive, as I found that gpart was not always able to clear all
metadata.  Why, I do not know. imo, that should be a gpart
subcommand - unequivocally and assuredly wipe all metadata.
("gpart destroy -F"  does not seem to always work).

In summary, I now prefer gpart and the gsuite of tools, but they
are still rough around the edges in the documentation, ease of
use and examples areas.