Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 18 Mar 2006 07:24:19 -0500 | From | Theodore Ts'o <> | Subject | Re: [Ext2-devel] [PATCH 2/2] ext2/3: Support 2^32-1blocks(e2fsprogs) |
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On Sat, Mar 18, 2006 at 03:11:02AM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote: > > As I said in my previous mail, You should specify -F option to > > create ext2/3 which has more than 2**31-1 blocks. > > It is because of the compatibility. > > Oh, using -F for this is highly dangerous. That would allow mke2fs to > run on e.g. a mounted filesystem or something. Instead use an option > like "-E 16tb" or something.
Agreed that we shouldn't use -F, but what's the compatibility reason? Supporting 2**31-1 blocks required bugfixes in the kernel and in e2fsprogs, yes, but if it's not a filesystem format change, but rather a "kernel had bugs which have now been fixed" statement, that's not the sort of thing where I'd think forcing the system administrator to add a magic command-line flag would be necessary or desirable.
I could see printing a warning message saying that older kernels might have problems with this, and I could also imagine including with the kernel patch enabling some sort of flag that could be queried, perhaps via /sys/fs/ext3/32bit-nr-blocks so that if it isn't present, mke2fs could give a more emphatic warning that the current kernel wouldn't be able to deal with filesystems being created.
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