Re: [RFC 1/6] genhd: update docs for GENHD_FL_UP

Christoph Hellwig
2021-07-19T09:55:45Z

On Thu, Jul 15, 2021 at 01:23:36PM -0700, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> The GENHD_FL_UP is used internally so we can know when we can add and
> remove partitions, so just clarify that. Right now it has this 1980's
> description comparing it to network drivers "ifconfig up" idea, and
> that can easily lead to invalid uses.

GENHD_FL_UP actually is pretty horrible - it uses a value used for
something that should be mostly read only at device runtime for
state an does so badly. I actually have a patch to kill it, as we can
just check if the inode for the whole device blockdev is hashed instead.