From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Matthew Wilcox Subject: Re: minixfs bitmaps and associated lossage Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 16:25:57 -0600 Message-ID: <20060506222557.GK9609@parisc-linux.org> References: <44560796.8010700@gmail.com> <20060506162956.GO27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> <20060506163737.GP27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> <20060506220451.GQ27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Linus Torvalds Return-path: Received: from palinux.external.hp.com ([192.25.206.14]:8579 "EHLO palinux.external.hp.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932089AbWEFWZ6 (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 May 2006 18:25:58 -0400 To: Al Viro Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060506220451.GQ27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 11:04:51PM +0100, Al Viro wrote: > So... What the hell can we do? Layouts (4) and (5) are clearly > broken and _never_ worked - there's nothing that would manage to create > such filesystem. So these are obvious candidates for switching - either > to (2) (correct) or to (3) (broken, but at least match util-linux fsck.minix > and mkfs.minix on such platforms). The question being, what do we do with > (3) (big-endian metadata, little-endian bitmaps) and what do we do with > Linux fsck.minix? Aside of repeating the mantra, that is ("All Software > Sucks, All Hardware Sucks")... For parisc (and I suspect many other architectures), the situation is clear. Nobody has ever used minixfs, and the only possible reason to use it is for data transfer from another system. Now, there's more i386/minix systems in existence than there are m68k/minix, so I'd actually prefer to switch parisc to support the LE minix format. Or, since that would involve doing work for something that nobody would ever use, just disabling it on parisc. If anyone ever wants it, they can do the work.