Re: [PATCH] xfs_mkfs: wipe old signatures from the device

[Martin Steigerwald <Martin@lichtvoll.de>]

Am Donnerstag, 14. Februar 2013 schrieb Dave Chinner:
> > So I
> > think that it got to the point where users will usually use mkfs.xfs
> > -f all the time. And even if they did not and they would use a wrong
> > device they would probably get the same warning even for the device
> > they wanted to use in the first place.
> 
> I get a couple of queries a year from people saying they
> accidentally ran mkfs.ext4 on the wrong device and want to know if
> they can recover their XFS filesystem. The next question is usually
> "why didn't mkfs.ext4 warn me there was an existing filesystem on
> the device like mkfs.xfs does?".
> 
> That is why the "don't overwrite an existing filesystem by default"
> behaviour is important. Users like to be protected from mistakes
> they weren't aware they made, and far too few of our filesystem
> utilities provide that safety net.
> 
> A couple of users a year losing data like this is a couple of users
> too many. Especially when it would only take a couple of hours of
> your time to implement....
> 
> > So even thoug it might help in some cases I do not think that we
> > should go and change all file systems to do that as well, it would
> > not be very useful anyway.
> 
> Tell that to the next user that trashes their data because a
> filesystem tool simply assumed in correctly that it owned the block
> device.

Full ACK.

I always loved that mkfs.xfs asks in that case.

IMO its just sane to do so.

-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
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