Subject: Re: newfs_msdos
To: Brook Milligan <firstname.lastname@example.org>
From: Manuel Bouyer <email@example.com>
Date: 12/10/1999 10:06:30
On Thu, Dec 09, 1999 at 10:57:24PM -0700, Brook Milligan wrote:
> Clearly, no one feels like writing unnecessary config entries. The
> information (which includes more than geometry) needs to come from
> somewhere, though.
Which informations ? How can mformat work then ?
> Other potential sources of the geometry information (but not the rest)
> - the BSD disklabel (this may not exist on all disks needing
> formating, or is it true that the DIOCGDINFO ioctl(2) will always
> yield useful geometry information about any raw disk device? is that
> geometry the BIOS geometry? if not, how is that retrieved?)
> - the MBR partition table (my documentation indicates that the
> geometry is in fact not encoded there; correct me if I'm wrong)
I'm sure all the infos are here (we tell to tell fdisk the geometry,
and can print it back when re-reading the partition table).
The table would still be needed for floppies though ...
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI. Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr