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

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 04:36:34PM +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> > 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.

If the lilo or grub approach is better is at least debatable, but that's
not really the point here.

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

That _is_ the real problem.  But we're getting quite offtopic as non
of that is related to FIEMAP anymore ;-)