Re: address@hidden: Bug#172662: libparted1.6-0: please don't call sgi disklabels mips disklabels]

[Ralf Baechle]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 08:17:25AM +1100, Andrew Clausen wrote:

> > calling the SGI disklabels mips disklabels is incorrect since only SGI
> > based mips machines use these disklabels (no other mips based machines
> > use this kind of disklabels - and there are lots of them). Better names
> > would be either Irix or SGI disklabels (fdisk uses both names). Attached
> > patch changes the name in the package descriptions to SGI and in
> > libparted itself to 'sgi-mips'.  Any chance to change the name?
> > Regards,
> >  -- Guido
> 
> Ralf told me that MIPS (the company?) created the format... that was
> the rationale.  I guess SGI is probably a more user-friendly name?
> 
> Ralf: what do you think?

I like sticking to the original name things were born with, so I just
did some history check.  What's definately wrong is calling the thing
disklabel.  That's the BSD / Sun term describing something else so being
ambiguous.  It's even a self contradiction with the source code of dvhtool
and any piece of documentation I've found.

It was also wrong to attribute it to MIPS or SGI, it seems.  I just
powered up my Risc/OS 4.52 box for the first time in a few years and
checked, dvhtool's [1] man page is in section 1M-SysV, so this must
some SysV heritage.

There's other non-SGI systems also using this DVH thing, so I suggest
to call it "Disk Volume Header" and not attribute it to any company.

  Ralf

[1] dvhtool is the tool to manipulate the dvh's content.