Re: Removing fdisk and bsdlabel (legacy partition tools)

Hi all,

> Am 25.01.2024 um 00:47 schrieb Rodney W. Grimes <freebsd-rwg@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>:
> 
>> I would agree personally, to moving to ports (eg ports/sysutils) with
>> a DEPRECATED in the DESCR or something, or better yet a Make
>> invokation event to say "superceded, here is how to proceed against
>> advice") or something.
> 
> They are totally useless as ports when your booted from install
> media and working from a standalone shell.  These are the exact
> times you want things like fdisk and bsdlabel so you can figure
> out wtf is going on, and bsdinstall is NOT gona help you.
> 
> I know there are a boat load of people that have built there
> own installers for VM's and stuff, running UFS and I bet you
> they are using MBR disks too.  PLEASE do not kick these tiny
> little and very usable and pretty univeral (as far as I know
> ALL BSD's have fdisk and bsdlabel/disklabel) tools out of
> the base system.
> 
> The world is NOT 2TB nvme drives with GPT, EFI and ZFS,
> yours might not be, but I am pretty certain I am not
> alone in this other world.

I totally undestand that point, but what exactly do these tools do that
gpart cannot? On MBR disks? With BSD partitions?

Ever since I found out that gpart can manage *all* on-disk partition formats
I have not been using anything else. You can create your MBR partitions
and BSD labels just fine with gpart. At least in all situations I encountered,
there might of course be edge cases I simply don't know.

gpart is not the "GPT partition tool". It's the universal swiss army knife
"GEOM partition tool" for all disk partitioning in any format supported.

Kind regards,
Patrick