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From: Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>
To: "Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones@redhat.com>
Cc: libguestfs@redhat.com, berrange@redhat.com, util-linux@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Libguestfs] Should we always do wipefs before mkfs?  Discuss ...
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 10:20:03 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130205092003.GA5865@x2.net.home> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20130204182338.GA15222@rhmail.home.annexia.org>

On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 06:23:38PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=907554

 All mkfs.<type> should be robust enough to wipe the device. I'm
 currently working with guys around filesystems to improve mkfs.ext4
 and mkfs.xfs

    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=902512

 .. but nothing is perfect so explicitly call wipefs(8) from
 installers or things like libguestfs is definitely good idea.

> We could change libguestfs's guestfs_mkfs (internally) so it always
> does an implicit wipefs on the filesystem.  wipefs is not too onerous --
> in particular I believe it only writes to a few chosen areas of the
> disk.  Especially considering that we're about to run mkfs anyway
> which for some filesystems writes a lot of blocks.

 wipefs(8) (or blkid_do_wipe() from the library) wipes only magic
 strings to make the filesystem (raids or partition tables) invisible
 for libblkid. It means very few bytes.

> Thoughts?

 Go ahead :-)

    Karel


-- 
 Karel Zak  <kzak@redhat.com>
 http://karelzak.blogspot.com

  reply	other threads:[~2013-02-05  9:20 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-02-04 18:23 [Libguestfs] Should we always do wipefs before mkfs? Discuss Richard W.M. Jones
2013-02-05  9:20 ` Karel Zak [this message]
2013-02-05  9:37   ` Richard W.M. Jones

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