Re: installboot is broken

[Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost>]

On 2013-03-24 17:33, Matt Thomas wrote:
> On Mar 24, 2013, at 9:32 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote:
>
> > On 2013-03-24 16:39, Anders Magnusson wrote:
> > > On 03/24/2013 03:36 PM, Martin Husemann wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 09:21:39AM +0100, Martin Husemann wrote:
> > > > > I didn't have old enough disklabel sources around, will check there.
> > > > It looks to me that installboot does exactly what disklabel -B did after
> > > > this commit:
> > > >
> > > > revision 1.17
> > > > date: 1995/04/23 19:27:59;  author: ragge;  state: Exp;  lines: +3 -3
> > > > Changed to use only one bootblock file on VAX.
> > > >
> > > > to sbin/disklabel/Makefile.
> > > Vax only have one bootblock which is installed in the first 16 sectors
> > > on the disk.
> > > The boot block is the same for all different disk types. Which is nice :-)
> >
> > Right. However, the real problem is that installboot does not use block 0 from xxboot. 
> > installboot instead have a structure defined with some "magic" fields, and 
> > installboot only changes one or two values in the boot block when you run it. It does 
> > copy block 1 and up from xxboot, but it totally skips block 0 of xxboot.
>
> The reason for that is not overwrite the disklabel.

Maybe I haven't been clear enough here.
To clarify my point - I'm not trying to say that installboot should copy 
block 0 of xxboot straight off. What I'm trying to say is that 
installboot needs to merge block 0 of the disk with block 0 of the 
primary bootstrap. The parts that are outside of the actual disklabel 
should be taken from the primary bootstrap, while the parts that are the 
disklabel should be kept from the disk.
That is the proper way installboot should work.

        Johnny

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