Subject: Re: Questions about features of NetBSD
To: der Mouse <mouse@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
List: current-users
Date: 04/10/1995 18:16:35
On Mon, 10 Apr 1995 13:02:18 -0400
der Mouse <mouse@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU> wrote:
> You did say "isa". If you mean the bus used in many x86 family
> machines, you should probably take it to port-i386 rather than
> current-users. Machine independence is relative; in the context of
> current-users, nothing x86-specific can be machine independent.
Not necessarily...The i386-family isn't the *only* machine out there with
ISA...Otherwise, why would there be `/sys/dev/isa' ? (or eisa, or pci...)
> Extremely unlikely to happen, because it is bound to break
Absolutely un-true. With your example of the sparc, simply translate the
in-core BSD disklabel into a SunOS disklabel and write it. The reverse
already happens at read time. While it is true that the BSD disklabel
carries other information, there is likely spare space in the SunOS
label *somewhere*...you just keep the extra information there, and grab
it as appropriate at read time. If there is no spare space, then what's
the difference compared to what you already have?
> compatability with native OS disk labels on most platforms. For
> example, NetBSD/sparc uses SunOS-compatible disk labels, but a pack
> with an fdisk-style partition table on it for NetBSD/i386 will perforce
> not have a valid SunOS disk label for NetBSD/sparc. You would have to
> special-case every port to know about every other port's disk labeling
> schemes.
Not every port. You bring it out into the MI layer so that everyone can
use it...
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