From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Francis Moreau Subject: Re: Soft RAID and EFI systems Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2014 10:45:42 +0100 Message-ID: <52F0B6C6.50905@gmail.com> References: <70EFD3D5-F7AC-4359-8888-99EB6CCA9E4F@colorremedies.com> <52EEB9F2.2000607@gmail.com> <3D3B8F1A-F525-459D-95F2-9D7889C222CD@colorremedies.com> <52F0A58D.6000400@gmail.com> <52F0AB60.8000800@hesbynett.no> <52F0AD83.4030300@gmail.com> <52F0B453.3070108@hesbynett.no> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <52F0B453.3070108@hesbynett.no> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: David Brown , Chris Murphy Cc: linux-raid List-Id: linux-raid.ids On 02/04/2014 10:35 AM, David Brown wrote: [...] >> >> It seems odd to have chosen FAT32 in the first place then. > > FAT32 is the worst possible choice of a filesystem, except for three > aspects - it is quite simple and can be implemented in a small amount of > code (such as in EFI or a bootloader), it is usable on small disks or > partitions, and it is supported by brain-dead OS's that don't understand > better alternatives (NTFS has journalling, but is a monster to implement > in something the size of EFI). > > It's a crap filesystem, but it is the "industry standard" for small > disks and small systems. If readonly support is only needed, there're some alternative to FAT32. But I agree FAT32 is well known by the industry standard. > >> >>> >>> The most important way to protect your FAT32 system is simply to avoid >>> writing to it except when absolutely necessary. If it is mounted >>> read-only, and only updated when changing grub or updating the kernel, >>> then just make sure you don't power-cycle your machine at that time. >> >> Well, the problem is that you never know when power failures happen at >> least for me with a small server without any power backup. > > The answer here is staring you in the face... get an UPS. A small one > is not expensive - you only need it to run the server for a couple of > minutes. Even though journalled filesystems can keep their /metadata/ > consistency after a power failure, they don't normally guarantee /data/ > consistency, and certainly cannot guarantee /application level/ > consistency. You get that from doing a proper shutdown. And remember > also that after an unclean shutdown, restarts involve long consistency > checks at the raid level and at the filesystem level - an UPS will let > you avoid that. I understand your point. Thanks.