Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!oz.cis.ohio-state.edu!jgreely From: jgreely@oz.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Next Bugs Message-ID:Date: 25 Sep 89 16:45:05 GMT References: <2420@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> <6247@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: J Greely Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 44 In-reply-to: avie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu's message of 24 Sep 89 08:34:29 GMT In article <6247@pt.cs.cmu.edu> avie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Avadis Tevanian) writes: >In article <2420@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> jst@cca.ucsf.edu.UUCP (Joe Stong) writes: >>It has an interestingly misleading help message, from which I might >>conclude that typing "disk -i /dev/rod0a" is a way to bring it up in >>interactive mode. Pretty frightening, -i is INITIALIZE, and not >>interactive. >Correct, disk -i is initialize. I don't know why its frightening. I do! Mostly because we fell for it when I got the 0.9 release disk. The problem with "disk" is that it was undocumented under 0.9, and all you got was the usage message (unchanged for 1.0), which looks like this: usage: /usr/etc/disk [option flags] [action flags] raw-device option flags: ... action flags: ... -i initialize disk ... interactive mode if no action flags specified example: /usr/etc/disk -i /dev/rod0a The key is the last two lines. "Oh, -i is interactive mode. That makes sense". One, I think it's silly for the example to be "initialize disk, no questions asked". It's not something you want to give a novice system administrator (or a tired one!). Two, the presence of the previous line makes it much more likely that someone will make a mistake. Three, if there weren't a proper manual page in 1.0 for this dangerous but useful command, I'd be screaming for blood. "But *sniff*, you will come back to play with us again, won't you?" "Of *course* I will! On the second Tuesday of next week." "Hooway! Hooway!" "Wait! The *second* Tuesday?" -=- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)