Re: fdisk vs. BSD disklabels and slices

On Sun, Jan 6, 2019 at 2:31 PM Bob Tracy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Has anyone reading this used a recent version of "fdisk" to create a BSD
> disklabel and disk slices from scratch on an Alpha?  If so, would you
> please describe the procedure in enough detail that relevant Linux
> installation documentation could be updated?  It would seem to be anything
> *but* intuitive :-(.

fdisk's BSD disklabel support has been unusable raw disks, as far as I
understand, since v2.23. See
https://www.spinics.net/lists/util-linux-ng/msg11869.html

> If "fdisk" is the wrong utility, I need a pointer to the correct one(s).
> At this point, I'm seriously considering digging out my old Debian 4.0
> CDs and harvesting the essential pieces.
>
> As always, thanks in advance.

Use 'parted' instead. It works well. Reminds me that I need to change
the Gentoo handbook to reference parted instead of fdisk.

> For what it's worth, the new Gentoo "install-alpha-minimal" image fixed
> the "qla1280" firmware loading issue for the most part (a module reload
> is required to get the firmware to load).

Good to hear. I suspect the module is in the initramfs but the
firmware is on the root file system. Hmm..