Re: Can't change partition table anymore

The default behaviour is here to stay because "Correct behaviour"
in FreeBSD is to avoid implementing panic(8).

We will not by default allow people, be it novice or selfdescribed
wizards, to write to disk sectors which a filesystem is currently
in possesion of, without a deliberate disabling of the protection
mechanism.

Enabling foot-shooting is in the category of open-heart surgery:
it is not something we want people to try "just to see if that
happens to solve my problem".

So the sysctl knob is here to stay, one way or another.

We can argue about what the name of the sysctl should be and where
it should be documented, and every single one of you are able to
sit down and write a patch for your preference and submit it to us.

It is far less obvious where the documentation of features like
this belong than most people think.  This is not something that
belongs in the dd(1) or ata(4) manual pages, although they could
and probably should cross-reference it.

It has been suggested that the kernel issue a printf when this
happens, but that is 100% precisely the wrong response:  that would
introduce an effective DoS against any machine with a serial console.

And I hate to say this, but this "horribly undocumented sysctl" is
in company of about 200 other equally undocumented sysctls in the
system, many of which have equally profound impact on how the system
works.

So for all I care, this discussion is over until somebody comes up
with a patch we can all agree on.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk_at_FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.