> [I've added port-sparc bceause this is a sparc/hp300 cross-port issue.]
> 
> > yesterday I tried to use my ZIP drive ( SCSI of course ) to bring the
> > NetBSD-1.2 dist. home to my hp.  I thought about disklabeling it on
> > the hp and then later at the university use it on a SPARC IPX running
> > netbsd 1.1.  first thing: the sparc didn't see the disklabel.
> 
> Yeah, NetBSD/sparc - at least last time I looked at the code - doesn't
> understand native NetBSD disklabels, only SunOS-style disklabels.  IMO
> this is a lose (you need a SunOS-style label on your boot disk, but not
> on any others, unless they're shared with non-NetBSD OSes).
> 
> > Is the disklabel-part platform-dependent ?
> 
> Yes.

I have a "device arrival on probe" schema that I have been working on
for FreeBSD for some time now.  It relies on the existance of a devfs,
and asks logical-to-physical translation layers and/or file systems
to claim devices.

This would resolve the "platform dependent disklabel" problem rather
handily.

Is there any plans to move to a devfs in the near future for NetBSD/OpenBSD?


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.