And then spake Allen Briggs as follows:
> What does this have to do with anything?  We are using the A/UX
> partition labels.  We are not using A/UX information within the
> partitions.  Maybe this would be a decent future expansion option,
> I don't see a whole lot of use for it, myself.
> 
> I don't know how we got talking about the actual partitioning
> software.  We can't override Apple's paritition maps w/o making
> ourselves incompatible with the MacOS.  Not a good idea.  I also
> don't like *BSD/i386's (and just about every other i386/unix)
> policy of making a seperate raw parition and repartitioning that.
> 

I strongly agree with Allen here -- keep the partitioning the way it
is, because it works fine. The only reason I run Linux on my PC instead
of NetBSD is that the PC also is used for real work (i.e. DOS), and I
can't blow away the whole disk just so I can use NetBSD. 

On the Mac, however, I can use NetBSD in perfect harmony with Mac OS. 
Weigh the different benefits here -- you either get compatibility with 
the Mac OS partitioning scheme, and thereby coexistence with Mac OS / 
A/UX / future Mac OSes, or you get the dubious and rather selfish benefit
of NetBSD requiring its own disk, but having its own partition scheme.

Is there any good reason, really, to have an incompatible partition scheme?
No. The only reason for a partition scheme like this is that UNIX in general
hasn't needed to coexist before -- it's always been used to replace something
awful like TWENEX, VMS, etc. but now we have OSes which we might want to keep.

So it is logical that each architecture port might have its own way of 
acclimatizing UNIX to its native partition schemes, whether they be brain-
damaged or not. NetBSD/i386 has its lots-of-partitions-in-one scheme, which
is distinctly inferior (IMO), in terms of compatibility, to Linux's method of
simply having normal DOS partitions for user- and swap-areas. NetBSD/mac68k,
on the other hand, has a Linuxy partition style: 1 macos partition for each
1 BSD partition. Is that so bad? It's certainly less complicated.

Thus, having a weirdo partition scheme is a direction that I am specifically
interested in seeing NetBSD/Mac stay away from.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Gaeke <brg@dgate.ping.com> --- Email for PGP2.6.2 public key
"'Involuntary' means a non-intentional act such as a hat blowing
    off or a scream resulting from a sudden wasp sting."