Re: [PATCH] bootfs: simple bootloader filesystem

Dave Chinner
2019-04-01T21:46:37Z

On Mon, Apr 01, 2019 at 12:00:01AM -0700, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> From: Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org>
>
> Does your computer use a bootloader which arrogantly declares that it can
> read boot files off a filesystem but isn't sophisticated enough even to
> recognize when that filesystem needs journal recovery?
>
> Does your system software deployment program foolishly omit system calls
> to flush newly unwrapped packages to disk? Do you sometimes wonder if
> they've forgotten that old maxim, "wait for the disk drive light to turn
> off /before/ you power down"?
>
> Are your computer operators aggressively derpy? Do they have a habit of
> leaving disk cables on the floor so they can trip over them twenty times
> a day? Does this leave you with sad files full of zeroes?
>
> If so, bootfs is for you! This new filesystem type uses journalling to
> ensure metadata integrity, but forces all writes and directory tree
> updates to be synchronous, fsyncs files on close, and checkpoints its
> journal whenever a synchronization event happens. Some allege this is
> very slow, but I've been able to max out the iops on both of my double
> height floppy drives! In a power-cycling stress test, I found that the
> switch broke off in my hand before I lost any data. This concept may
> sound terrible, but like any good crutch, it _is_ made of wood!
>
> Singed-off-by: Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org>
^^^^^^^^^^

Ooooo - such a hot topic! Finally bootfs is more than just
we-really-should-do-this conference talk!

Looks good to me - with this we can finally move on from LILO....

Acked-by: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>

FWIW, Should this have a cc: stable@kernel.org tag on
it so it gets out into distro-world ASAP?

Cheers,

Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com