since my first email, i see what i did wrong...
that was the point of writing to the mail list
in the first place, to see if i was doing something
silly.  turns out i was.  does that warrant abuse?
of course it does, i am not new here.


i also see, that now this problem became simply
a "should we babysit root" issue, and i dont
want root to be babysit either.

but regardless of that, i think leaving old garbage
after newfs-ing a partition is not a good idea in
any case and it's one of those things i wouldn't
except either.  my mistake again.

quoted text
> If ffs had overwritten the beginning of the partition you would have
> ended with a *different* error message and the kernel would not have
> 
> => Your homework is to figure out what the other error message would be
>    and why.

it would be the same error message ffs gives when given
a non-ffs partition:

mount_msdos: /dev/sd1a on /mnt: Invalid argument



quoted text
> (Trying to create a diff would help you to learn too, sending a bug
> report will not.)

this is simply not true.  writing a useful, informative bug report
needs research, testing, etc.  i have learnt a lot by sending bugs.
in fact, did not send bug reports because in the process of writing
it i realized what i was doing wrong.  maybe if i had started writing
that report for this issue, i would have realized the mistake myself.

-f
-- 
to have a friend you must first be one.