Re: Details of OBSD partitioning program?

[Tim Donahue <TDonahue@haynesconstruction.com>]

I'm not sure if you are talking about the fdisk-like tool (isn't it actually
named fdisk?), which allows you to partition the drive in a way that allows
you to install other operating systems or if you are talking about
disklabel.  If you are talking about disklabel, then you are able to
directly edit the partition table saved on the disk.  It makes for a great
way to remove pesky remnants of a dual boot Windows/Linux install when
things go bad.  But then so does 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<fill in drive
label here>c'.

I only have limited experience with the fdisk-like tool, so I can't vouch
for what it does.  The only reason I happen to know how disklabel works, is
because I have had to edit the table by hand to get my CF-boot boxes to run.
Hope this helps.

Tim Donahue

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Ehrlich [mailto:scott@ehrlichtronics.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:59 PM
To: misc@openbsd.org
Subject: Details of OBSD partitioning program?


I was recently introduced to http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/

but have yet to use it.  The description is simply that it wipes the
writable area of a hard drive to zeros.

What does OBSD's partitioning program do?   I've had troubles in the past
when a Linux primary partition has been removed but not the swap, and no
other partitioning tool other than OBSD's was able to handle and remove that
swap partition.

So, does OBSD's tool wipe out the drive, or simply mangle the partition
table enough to allow for proper repartitioning, keeping any existing data
in the writable area intact or at least untouched, even if "erased"?

Thanks.

Scott