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Re: Can't set volume options during install?



    Date:        Fri, 23 Aug 2019 20:52:02 +0200
    From:        Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <20190823185202.GA3348%mail.duskware.de@localhost>

  | On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 07:30:33PM +0100, Robert Swindells wrote:
  | > Someone using a disk with 4k blocks might want
  |
  | If we *have* to set that manually, something is wrong.

I agree with that much, but ...

  | Besides, only disklabel provides storage for this data,

Huh?   What is being discussed here?   I assumed it was the makefs
parameters that get used (and yes, two of those do get inserted in
the a bsd disklabel, though I have never been sure why - does anything
actually use those values?)

  | Our file systems better work in all cases.

They work, but they can be less than optimal - when I (not from sysinst)
make filesystems, I almost always choose the frag, block, and number of
inodes params manually, because I know I know better than some default
based upon filesys size the characteristics of the data to be stored in
the filesystem - some data works better with big blocks and perhaps no
frags at all (ie: frag size == block size) some works better with smaller
blocks, and tiny frags (the smallest we can get away with) and I know
whether the filesystem is going to have 100K huge files, or 100M small ones,
and can allocate enough inodes so that when the data is full, the inodes
reach about 80% used (close enough to all in use that there's not enough
space to be regained that anyone would want to redo the filesys with less,
but enough so there is no danger of running out).

I'd suggest putting this back - but possibly hiding it (and perhaps
some other menu items) with an "expert mode" setting, defaulting to off,
so newcomers who would do better to just accept the defaults, at least for
their first installs, don't get overwhelmed by stuff that they could alter,
but don't understand, and should probably just leave at the default values.

kre



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