From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66A4FEE14A9 for ; Thu, 7 Sep 2023 01:53:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S234619AbjIGBxU (ORCPT ); Wed, 6 Sep 2023 21:53:20 -0400 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net ([23.128.96.19]:44466 "EHLO lindbergh.monkeyblade.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S232298AbjIGBxU (ORCPT ); Wed, 6 Sep 2023 21:53:20 -0400 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (relay.kernel.org [52.25.139.140]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E482AE73 for ; Wed, 6 Sep 2023 18:53:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id EB18CC433C8; Thu, 7 Sep 2023 01:53:15 +0000 (UTC) Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2023 21:53:27 -0400 From: Steven Rostedt To: Dave Chinner Cc: Guenter Roeck , Christoph Hellwig , ksummit@lists.linux.dev, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS/KERNEL SUMMIT] Trust and maintenance of file systems Message-ID: <20230906215327.18a45c89@gandalf.local.home> In-Reply-To: References: <8718a8a3-1e62-0e2b-09d0-7bce3155b045@roeck-us.net> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.19.1 (GTK+ 2.24.33; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 7 Sep 2023 08:54:38 +1000 Dave Chinner wrote: > And let's not forget: removing a filesystem from the kernel is not > removing end user support for extracting data from old filesystems. > We have VMs for that - we can run pretty much any kernel ever built > inside a VM, so users that need to extract data from a really old > filesystem we no longer support in a modern kernel can simply boot > up an old distro that did support it and extract the data that way. Of course there's the case of trying to recreate a OS that can run on a very old kernel. Just building an old kernel is difficult today because today's compilers will refuse to build them (I've hit issues in bisections because of that!) You could argue that you could just install an old OS into the VM, but that too requires access to that old OS. Anyway, what about just having read-only be the minimum for supporting a file system? We can say "sorry, due to no one maintaining this file system, we will no longer allow write access." But I'm guessing that just supporting reading an old file system is much easier than modifying one (wasn't that what we did with NTFS for the longest time?) -- Steve