On Wed, 24 Jan 2024 10:44:57 -0500 Ed Maste <ema...@freebsd.org> wrote:
> MBR (PC BIOS) partition tables were historically maintained with > fdisk(8), but gpart(8) has long been the preferred method for working > with partition tables of all types. fdisk has been declared as > obsolete in the man page since 2015. Similarly BSD disklabels were > historically maintained with bsdlabel. It does not yet have a > deprecation notice - I have proposed a man page addition in > https://reviews.freebsd.org/D43563. > > I would like to disconnect these from the build, and subsequently > remove them. This is prompted by a recent bsdlabel bug report which > uncovered a longstanding buffer overflow in that tool. Effort is much > better focused on contemporary, maintained tools rather than > investigating issues in deprecated ones. Removing these tools would > happen in FreeBSD 15 only (no change in 14 or 13). > > Code review to disconnect fdisk: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D43575 > > Note that this effort is limited to these maintenance tools only - > there is no change to kernel or gpart support for MBR or BSD > disklablel partitioning. That said, MBR partitioning and BSD > disklabels are best considered legacy formats and should be avoided > for new installations, if possible. > > If anyone is using fdisk and/or bsdlabel rather than gpart I would > appreciate knowing what is preventing you from using the contemporary > tools. > FYI gpart doesn't allow you to create disklabel with more than 8 items either. robert@venus ~ 563$ doas mdconfig -l md0 robert@venus ~ 564$ doas mdconfig -lv md0 vnode 40M /usr/home/robert/test_disk.img robert@venus ~ 565$ doas gpart backup md0 MBR 4 1 freebsd 1 81919 robert@venus ~ 566$ doas gpart backup md0s1 BSD 8 1 freebsd-ufs 0 4096 2 freebsd-swap 4096 4096 4 freebsd-ufs 8192 4096 5 freebsd-ufs 12288 4096 6 freebsd-ufs 16384 4096 7 freebsd-ufs 20480 4096 8 freebsd-ufs 24576 4096 robert@venus ~ 567$ doas gpart add -t freebds-swap -s 2M md0s1 gpart: index '9': No space left on device robert@venus ~ 568$ doas gpart add -t freebds-swap -s 2M -i 9 md0s1 gpart: index '9': Invalid argument robert@venus ~ 569$ bsdlabel /dev/md0s1 bsdlabel: unable to get correct path for /dev/md0s1: Permission denied robert@venus ~ 570$ doas bsdlabel /dev/md0s1 # /dev/md0s1: 8 partitions: # size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg] a: 4096 0 4.2BSD 0 0 0 b: 4096 4096 swap c: 81919 0 unused 0 0 # "raw" part, don't edit d: 4096 8192 4.2BSD 0 0 0 e: 4096 12288 4.2BSD 0 0 0 f: 4096 16384 4.2BSD 0 0 0 g: 4096 20480 4.2BSD 0 0 0 h: 4096 24576 4.2BSD 0 0 0 robert@venus ~ 571$ I still need to get a netBSD VM running and create a test file with more than 8 partitions under a bsdlabel to see if gpart crashes.
