Re: introduce getlabelusesmbr()

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 10:49:53PM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> Hello,
> the evbmips supports more and more different hardware platforms,
> and we're now to the point where some evbmips platforms wants
> a mbr, while others don't.

How much does it really matter?
It is likely that all systems will have to access disks that have MBR
(eg USB connected disks) as well as those that don't (alien disks
from other machines formatted without MBR).

There may be constraints on the boot disk, but that is an installation
time issue.

The other problem is with the 'c' and 'd' disk partitions.
Last I looked at i386, the 'c' (MBR) partition was only used
in the 'can't write to disklabel' check!
I've never quite decided on the correct action when i386 finds
a disk where 'd' is a real partition, but switching 'c' and 'd'
so that 'c' is the real data is an option.

For existing disks something like the 'hunt the disklabel'
code that i386 uses (nominally MI) might be useful.

        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost