From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from dell-paw-3.cambridge.redhat.com ([195.224.55.237] helo=passion.cambridge.redhat.com) by pentafluge.infradead.org with esmtp (Exim 3.22 #1 (Red Hat Linux)) id 17HhGz-0007eJ-00 for ; Tue, 11 Jun 2002 09:45:05 +0100 From: David Woodhouse In-Reply-To: <3D05A8E5.9040808@bigpond.com> References: <3D05A8E5.9040808@bigpond.com> <3D057440.5000104@bigpond.com> <20449.1023779170@redhat.com> To: brendan.simon@bigpond.com Cc: linux-mtd Subject: Re: DOC2000 partitiioning question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 09:45:01 +0100 Message-ID: <22131.1023785101@redhat.com> Sender: linux-mtd-admin@lists.infradead.org Errors-To: linux-mtd-admin@lists.infradead.org List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Linux MTD discussion mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: brendan.simon@bigpond.com said: > HUH ??? If I read this correctly, this means one can NEVER reformat a > NFTL device with kernel that boots from a DOC (since the driver must > be built in to the kernel). Is this correct ? Yes, although in practice you'll get away with it if the NFTL is not in use at the time and you reboot without starting to use it. In general, you should be using the M-Systems DFORMAT utility under DOS anyway, rather than the nftl_format program under Linux. > This is obviously different for EXT2 and other filesystems, as they > can be reformatted anytime with the driver module loaded or built in > to the kernel. Is there a technical reason why NFTL is not the same > ??? You can't mount it in the same way as other file systems because it is not a normal file system. It doesn't provide a file system to the VFS, it provides a block device. It's only _like_ a file system. We could feasibly add an ioctl or some other way to instruct the NFTL code to 'unmount' and 'remount' an NFTL. It wouldn't be that hard - we have the code there to deal with modular DiskOnChip drivers being loaded and going away. Nobody's cared enough to do it, though. Reformatting the NFTL should be a rare occurrence. -- dwmw2