Talk:BSD disklabel

Categorisation
I've categorised this as Category:BSD software, but it seems slightly mendacious - I mean, it's not really software, is it? At the same time, it does seem to me it should be in a sub-category of Category:BSD rather than in the main BSD category, and this seemed the most suitable. A more clueful edit, however, would be welcome ... --JennyRad 19:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Dangerously ambiguous term
I would vote for a section underlining the fact that the 'disk label' referred to here is NOT what is generally understood as a Disk Label in conventional DOS/Linux terms, i.e a text identification-string for the disk.

The ambiguity which this double-meaning creates is a dangerous one, as replacing the master boot record (MBR) in entirety would result in at least a nonbootable disk, and possibly destruction of the disk's data, whereas changing the disk's text identifier is a normal and safe operation.

Label command

--Anteaus (talk) 21:34, 28 January 2008 (UTC)--


 * Disklabel is standard BSD UNIX terminology that has been around since at least the 4.3-Tahoe release (1988). What you describe is more usually referred to as a Volume Label. Letdorf (talk) 11:06, 29 January 2008 (UTC).

The notion of a disk label in the commonly-accepted sense dates back far earlier than that. Exactly how far I wouldn't like to say, maybe even to the earliest electronic computers. I think it is clear which has the preceding claim on the title. In any case I wasn't suggesting we challenge the BSD gurus over their use of the word, merely that we shoud point out the dangers inherent in confusing the two. This is especially the case as some *nix GUI disk-management tools muddle the two meanings, which is a recipe for disaster.

It might also be argued (no offence intended) that the terms 'Volume' and 'Label' when used in this way by BSD are Weasel Words. The correct and unambiguous terms are 'Partition' and 'Partition Table.' --Anteaus (talk) 21:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * No, a FAT "volume" is not necessarily a hard disk partition (it could be a floppy disk for example). A FAT or NTFS volume label is not the same thing as a partition table! Also, I think the fact that the title of this article is "BSD disklabel" makes it obvious which OS we are talking about here, but I've added some disambiguation to the intro para anyway. Letdorf (talk) 17:16, 8 February 2008 (UTC).

What was the purpose of "d"
I know that it's no longer in use, but what was the purpose of partition/label "d" ?

One of the links described it as "obselete whole disk", but how did it then differ from partition/label "c" ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Koppe (talk • contribs) 12:57, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Traditionally, d had no special meaning, but in PC BSD ports (eg. FreeBSD/i386, NetBSD/i386 etc), d is used to correspond to the whole physical disk instead of the usual c partition. In these cases, c corresponded to the BIOS MBR partition subdivided into BSD partitions only, excluding other MBR partitions used by other operating systems. Letdorf (talk) 17:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC).


 * FreeBSD has not done this for quite some time now, probably more than a decade; there is no way that it could possibly work (but it's also unnecessary). It used to be, in ancient *BSD systems, that the kernel did not really understand nested partitioning schemes, so the disk block numbers in the disklabel were absolute (physical) block numbers, rather than relative to the beginning of the slice.  The "d" partition was then needed to be able to access the other parts of the disk (for example, to update the master boot record).  I don't think even FreeBSD 2.2 (1997) still had this.  On modern systems, container boundaries are enforced strictly.  You could dig through old release notes to see when exactly this changed.  121a0012 (talk) 04:46, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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Original implementation
My very fuzzy recollection is that the original disklabel work was done in an Australian university (perhaps by Robert Elz) but CSRG reimplemented it from scratch for the 4.3-Tahoe release. 121a0012 (talk) 121a0012 (talk) 04:00, 18 August 2022 (UTC)