Re: [PATCH] 2.5.18 IDE 73

Martin Dalecki
2002-05-30T14:59:30Z

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl wrote:
> > Of course - improvements are always welcome.
> > (But I try to be slightly more careful than you are.
> > Util-linux runs on all libc's and all kernels, from libc4 to glibc2
> > and from 0.99 to 2.5. So, changes must be compatible.)
>
> Having them compatible acroess an insane range of kernels
> is a nice but futile exercise.
> Perhaps this partly explains why:
>
> 1. util-linux doesn't cover half of the system utilities needed on
> a sanely actual Linux system.
>
> 2. The Linux vendors have to apply insane number of patches to it
> util it's moderately usable.
>
> If you do the kernel ATA stuff, I'll take care of util-linux.

Well that's actually a deal :-).

> (Does it need more utilities? Probably those are in some other package.
> Sometimes stuff is added, but not very often. However, your suggestions
> are welcome.
> Do the vendors add patches? Half of that is vendor extensions, that is
> their business. Half of that is their stupidity. They blindly copy the
> patches other vendors apply "it is a patch - must be an improvement";
> sometimes I have to reject the same buggy patch more than a dozen times.
> When I ask for the reason of a patch, they don't know themselves.)

Well somehow I have partly to agree. But however having a way to
exclude network devices from mounting during mount -a is *very* usefull,
becouse failing NFS servers will sometines prohibit your watchdog
triggered reboot to happen for example!

Or not doing swapon twice and beeing silent about it - just good
UNIX habit the user requested it to go on - well it's on, so all
is fine, no error in this.

I can stuff together what I think is usefull however...

>
> > No need to invent here. No need to do the book keeping in kernel.
> >
> > Some need. Things like mount-by-label want to know what partitions
> > exist in order to look at the labels on each.
> > Yes, we really need a list of disk-like devices.
> > The gendisk chain.
>
> No I don't see that point. Data which has to be persistant across
> reboots is simple data which has to reside on disk. That's the
> way it is in UNIX (PalmOS to name an example).
>
> Maybe you never heard of mount-by-label?
>
> Andries

Urhg? I did of course hear about them!

~# ssh kozaczek
root@kozaczek's password:
Last login: Thu May 30 14:37:32 2002 from 10.0.0.1
cd [root@kozaczek root]# cd /etc
[root@kozaczek etc]# cat fstab
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
# /dev/loop1 /mnt/1 auto noauto,owner 0 0
# /dev/loop2 /mnt/2 auto noauto,owner 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
[root@kozaczek etc]#

Hmm I didn't check whatever they can be used on swap partitions too.
If not I will fix it right away.