# unused in disklabel



## fluca1978 (Apr 3, 2013)

Hi,
I noted a strange behavior of disklabel(8) and newfs(8) that I cannot explain to myself:


```
# disklabel -w ada2
# disklabel ada2

# /dev/ada2:
8 partitions:
#          size     offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:    4194288         16    unused        0     0   
  c:    4194304          0    unused        0     0     # "raw" part, don't edit
```

Not having edited the label, the fstype is of course unused. Now placing a filesystem on the partition does not change the situation:


```
# newfs ada2a
/dev/ada2a: 2048.0MB (4194288 sectors) block size 32768, fragment size 4096
        using 4 cylinder groups of 512.00MB, 16384 blks, 65536 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck_ffs -b #) at:
 192, 1048768, 2097344, 3145920

# disklabel ada2

# /dev/ada2:
8 partitions:
#          size     offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:    4194288         16    unused        0     0   
  c:    4194304          0    unused        0     0     # "raw" part, don't edit
```

And this is the strange part: newfs(8) is not updating the label and the label is reporting still an unused filesystem. And here comes my doubt: what is then the purpose of the label apart the offset and size? I was assuming that only the _fsize, bsize, bps/cpg_ were optional and intended as suggestion to newfs(8).


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## kpa (Apr 3, 2013)

As far as I know the fstype field is now optional, it's assumed to be 4.2bsd because there are no other usable values for it now. It's basically a partition type field.


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