On Sat, 12 Feb 2000, der Mouse wrote:

> Furthermore, this sort of behavior (refusing to newfs_xxx a partition
> not of type xxx) renders filesystem xxx completely broken for disks
> with legacy disklabels that can't represent partitions of type xxx.
> And sometimes, to keep boot ROMs happy, you have to use a legacy
> disklabel.

I agree. To be specific, it's difficult or impossible to create a
4.4LFS partition on mac68k. On i386, it's still annoying to have to
edit the disklabel just to newfs_lfs one partition.
 
> newfs refusing, I could see that, a la fsck.  But newfs_lfs should make
> an LFS regardless, and I would argue shouldn't even check that it's a
> device; it, like the rest of the newfs_xxx programs, should be
> perfectly happy to make a filesystem on anything that supports lseek
> and write.

Sure. Can mount be made to DTRT with the wrong arguments, that is,
fail gracefully if you try mount an lfs as an ffs, and vice-versa,
rather than trash the filesystem? That would be the only obstacle to
changing things, I should think.