SUNAGAWA Keiki <Keiki_SUNAGAWA@yokogawa.co.jp> wrote:

>Bob Nestor <rnestor@metronet.com>  wrote:
>
>Bob> Some disk formatters build partition maps larger than
>Bob> the number of partitions actually created.  As I recall
>Bob> Apple's utilities do this, but most other 3rd party
>Bob> formatters don't. That can be a real problem with
>Bob> pdisk.
>
>Do you mean both of Apple HD/SC Setup and Drive Setup are
>affected?  I like HD/SC Setup except it's modal dialog
>implememtation.
>
It's been some time since I looked at the various disk formatters and 
what they do, but as I recall Apple's utilities seemed to default to 
making a Partition Map with 20 entries. Most other disk formatters either 
built far fewer or no spares at all.  Also many of them threw in some 
screwy partitions and some of them didn't even bother to follow Apple's 
guidelines for Type names, etc.  It took quite a while to straighten out 
these details in Mkfs and even now I still hear of people running across 
something that is a little different.

Other than the problems that Mkfs doesn't support BSD 4.4 Filesystems, 
has problems with some disks (for whatever reason), and gets those darned 
SCSI Read errors it's not a half bad solution for most NetBSD users.  One 
of the best features (I think) is the ability to modify an existing 
partition into one of another type without screwing up the other disk 
partitions.  This has allowed NetBSD users to format and partition their 
disk with just about any formatter out there - even those that don't 
properly initialize the partitions for NetBSD use, and Mkfs just fixes 
these minor problems for them.

The "pdisk" approach seems to be more for the power-user and (I think) it 
offers too many ways for the average user to hose his disk.  I'd like to 
see the solution where we install on the Mac in the same way the i386 
port now installs, but I suspect the many different disk partitioning 
schemes we'll encounter will make this a difficult task.  Requiring the 
prospective user to re-format with one (or two) known disk formatters 
just so we know what kind of partitioning scheme we're dealing with seems 
no better than the exisitng Mkfs approach, but I'd be happy to be proven 
wrong.

-bob