svn commit: r287396 - in head: sbin/bsdlabel sbin/dumpfs sbin/fdisk sbin/ffsinfo sbin/mdconfig sbin/newfs sbin/newfs_msdos sbin/newfs_nandfs sbin/reboot share/man/man4 share/man/man7 share/man/man8...

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:01 AM, Edward Tomasz Napierala <trasz at freebsd.org>
wrote:

> On 0902T1737, Gleb Smirnoff wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 02:08:43PM +0000, Edward Tomasz Napierala wrote:
> > E> Author: trasz
> > E> Date: Wed Sep  2 14:08:43 2015
> > E> New Revision: 287396
> > E> URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/287396
> > E>
> > E> Log:
> > E>   It's 2015, and some people are still trying to use fdisk and then
> > E>   go asking what debug flags to set for GEOM to make it work.  Advice
> > E>   them to use gpart(8) instead.
> > E>
> > E>   Something similar should probably done with disklabel,
> > E>   but I need to rewrite the disklabel examples first.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Do we still have functionality of fdisk/bsdlabel that isn't covered
> > by gpart? Can we simply remove the tools?
>
> I think it would be possible, but I don't plan to do it.  Some
> people are still happily using them, and they are used in scripts,
> like the nanobsd build system.
>

Gpart still bogusly and steadfastly requires partitions to be aligned to the
bogus cylinder boundaries that are largely made-up by different layers
in the system (and are largely conflicting without any way to resolve
the issue because some of the lie comes from hardware adapters).
fdisk doesn't have this issue. Until gpart is fixed to make it's alignment
to cylinder groups optional, fdisk must remain.

As for nanobsd, I have plans to migrate them away from fdisk. None
of the three conflicting patches I've gotten for it to date are quite
right.

Warner