Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 5 Dec 1998 16:08:14 +0000 (GMT) | From | Riley Williams <> | Subject | Re: IDE -> ATA DISK (fwd) |
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Chris: Your server rejects mail from me, so I have no other means of reaching you...
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 14:57:54 +0000 (GMT) From: Riley Williams <rhw@bigfoot.com> To: Chris Siebenmann <cks@utcc.utoronto.ca> Subject: Re: IDE -> ATA DISK
Hi Chris.
> You write:
>> Most Unix tools include basic sanity checks, and that's one area >> where the Linux kernel could be improved. The following sanity >> check should not be that hard to do:
>> Q> Complain if the configuration selects file systems without >> Q> also selecting somewhere to mount them, as there's little >> Q> point to a kernel supporting (say) ext2 without supporting >> Q> any form of disk drive to use it on.
> I think this should be at most a warning; it should not be a fatal > error. It's possible to boot such a kernel using an initrd, after > all.
I'd agree there, but the current configure scripts make it nigh on impossible to produce effective warning messages, but very easy to produce error messages.
> The other warnings I can think of offhand that might be useful are:
> - no non-modular binfmt (or perhaps it should be more > restricted than that, not counting java or the like that > requires another binfmt module to get very far)
> - no non-modular filesystem
> maybe
> - no initrd support when there is no non-modular disk driver
> and any 'prerequisites' of things selected as non-modular (such as > say NFS non-modular without non-modular networking).
It's been suggested to me that this sort of thing would be best implemented as a separate "make checksane" step in the compilation that produces a report of any questionable option combinations, and I tend to agree with that, so will be looking into doing that over the Christmas break...
Best wishes from Riley.
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