Re: Mixing partitioned and non-partitioned discs in a RAID?

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Kai Krakow posted on Tue, 13 Sep 2016 00:21:10 +0200 as excerpted:

> Am Sun, 21 Aug 2016 02:19:33 +0000 (UTC)
> schrieb Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>:
> 
>> Chris Murphy posted on Sat, 20 Aug 2016 18:36:21 -0600 as excerpted:
>> 
>> > FAT leaves a lot to be desired but it's pretty universally supported
>> > and almost trivial to repair *if* the volume is repairable in the
>> > first place. The much bigger issue with ESP on Linux is this neurotic
>> > tendency of distros to persistently mount shit that does not need to
>> > be mounted. Like the ESP, and even the dedicated boot volume. They
>> > only need to be mounted when being updated and then should be
>> > umounted. And worse the convention is to do nested mount with /boot
>> > and then /boot/efi for the ESP so it's twice as bad a practice. By
>> > virtue of mounting the ESP the dirty bit is set, so any crash means
>> > it must be fsck'd and if that doesn't work, it's game over for that
>> > volume. Fragile setup.
>> 
>> Depends on the distro.  On gentoo, you set it up the way you want of
>> course, but the recommendation has always been /boot, and now the ESP,
>> not mounted by default.
>> 
>> But that would be /expected/ on gentoo, since being able to configure
>> it the way you want is the whole /point/ of running gentoo in the first
>> place.  Sort of like arch, only much more so.
> 
> systemd systems (I'm booting Gentoo with systemd) should auto-mount ESP
> to /boot on access, and auto-unmount after a short timeout. So the
> solution to this problem is already wired into systemd if you use (a)
> proper GPT setup (with correct GUIDs) and (b) do not mention /boot in
> fstab.

No "automagic" on-access mounting here.  The kernel options aren't turned 
on for it, neither do I want them on (the systemd ebuild checks for and 
recommends but does not force them, and systemd functions fine without 
them except it doesn't automount on access, which is pretty much the 
point).  What gets mounted on boot is what I have in fstab (plus a few 
things like cgroups that systemd handles entirely on its own).  After 
that, nothing else is mounted unless I mount it, or unmounted, unless I 
umount it or systemd does it as part of shutdown, etc.

However, good point about systemd, since it should more or less 
standardize handling across mainline distros over the longer term, except 
of course where admins/distros specifically configure it otherwise, as 
I've done here.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman