On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Chuck Silvers wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 06:26:15PM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> > On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Chuck Silvers wrote:
> > 
> > True, but the bsd disklabel format isn't the only disk partitioning format
> > we can read. Both Apple partitioning and MBR partitioning can get us to
> > beyond 32 partitions quick. :-)
> 
> since the proposal was to change the bsd label format, I thought the idea
> was to allow use of bsd labels for the additional partitions.  but since
> the bsd disk format is also the in-core format, changing it would allow
> other label formats to use more partitions in-core as you say.

I thought we were actually talking about adding more partitions per
drive. That is slightly different from changing the label format. A number
of folks (I thought including you, but I've been deleting messages too
fast :-) said that we can already see 16 will be too small, so let's grow
once, and be done with it. So that's either 32 or 64 partitions. :-)

> at any rate, it would be pretty strange if the preferred label format
> for netbsd (which is currently the bsd label format) didn't support the
> maximum number of partitions supported by netbsd, and the bsd label
> can't support even 32 reasonably on all platforms.

I don't think the current disk label will do 32 anywhere. MAXMAXPARTITIONS
is 22 - that's the most partitions you can fit in a struct disklabel and
fit in a 512-byte block.

I think supporting more partitions than the bsd label can support is fine.
We'll grow into something else which will support more. :-)

Take care,

Bill