Re: fsck: to repair or not to repair

[Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus@rath.org>]

On May 13 2016, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> Because btrfs can be multi-device, it needs some way to track which 
> devices belong to each filesystem, and it uses filesystem UUID for this 
> purpose.
>
> If you clone a filesystem (for instance using dd or lvm snapshotting, 
> doesn't matter how) and then trigger a btrfs device scan, say by plugging 
> in some other device with btrfs on it so udev triggers a scan, and the 
> kernel sees multiple devices with the same filesystem UUID as a result, 
> and one of those happens to be mounted, you can corrupt both copies as 
> the kernel btrfs won't be able to tell them apart and may write updates 
> to the wrong one.

That seems like a rather odd design. Why isn't btrfs refusing to mount
in this situation? In the face of ambiguity, guessing is generally bad
idea (at least for a computer program).


Best,
-Nikolaus
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