From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Arnd Bergmann Subject: Re: [PATCHv4] MMC: MMC boot partitions support. Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 11:21:50 +0200 Message-ID: <201104011121.50509.arnd@arndb.de> References: <1300533491-2378-2-git-send-email-andreiw@motorola.com> <201103311301.12053.arnd@arndb.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.126.171]:61226 "EHLO moutng.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755221Ab1DAJVx (ORCPT ); Fri, 1 Apr 2011 05:21:53 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-mmc-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-mmc@vger.kernel.org To: Andrei Warkentin Cc: Chris Ball , linux-mmc@vger.kernel.org On Thursday 31 March 2011, Andrei Warkentin wrote: > Plus what if you do intend to have a file system there? Other than > complexity and non-obvious usage, I don't see > anything gained by this. I wouldn't worry about ways of misusing this. > As I've said, in the only case it matters (some embedded device > booting from the boot partition), the user would have to gain root > access, build a kernel giving access to the boot partitions and be > able to boot into it. The character device (or sysfs_bin_file actually) would only make sense if we know that there is no reason to put a file system on it. The idea of that is that we intentionally treat it like a firmware flash, not like a block device because that is how it's used. If there is a reasonable chance that people actually want to have a file system in the boot partition, it should by all means be a block device. Arnd