Re: Filesystem creation

Riley Williams
2002-05-13T17:42:23Z

Hi Harry.

> The mkfs utility needs the size to be specified because block
> devices in ELKS do not update the blk_sizes array. (Remember the
> swap discussion).

I don't remember the discussion you refer to, so presume it wasn't
on this list but on some other list. However, there's a few obvious
questions that your comment poses, so can I ask them?

1. How come the figure that mkfs needs is so different from
the figure displayed by fdisk? I've yet to work out what
the correlation between the two is, as they appear to
bear no relation to each other.

2. How hard would it be to make mkfs take as its size parameter
the number reported by fdisk and calculate the size it needs
from that rather than expect the user to do the calculation
instead?

3. How hard would it be to fix ELKS so the size doesn't need to
be specified, either by getting the block devices to update
the blk_sizes array or by whatever other means are required?
This way, the whole problem just vanishes.

Best wishes from Riley.