Re: [PATCH 1/4] vfs: vfs-level fiemap interface

Jamie Lokier
2008-09-20T15:37:11Z

Chris Mason wrote:
> > > > For the journal case at least, grub can walk through the log of the FS
> > > > looking for up to date copies of things. It does this already for
> > > > reiserfs because the btree can't be trusted at all without a log replay.
> > OMFG.
>
> Shrug, either we force the user to do something to get the blocks on
> disk in a stable location or we have a bootloader that can parse the
> disk format. It's either pain on the developers (patching grub) or pain
> on every user, and the support people who have to remind them to rerun
> grub-find-the-disk-blocks-just-like-lilo

I think this thread may be confusing /usr/bin/grub with grub the bootloader.

One of the useful features of grub the bootloader is that it can boot
from a real filesystem without needing "run lilo before it's safe to
boot - or you'll regret shutting down".

That feature needs to use some kind of bleeding-eyes filesystem code,
or it will be as large as the filesystem code in Linux.

On the other hand, any dodgy direct access done by /usr/bin/grub has
no justification and is fair game for deletion, imho.

-- Jamie