Hi, On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 11:57:03PM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote: > Hmm, maybe RH should just change the installer so that it does "mke2fs -j" > for the root fs always, mounts it as ext2 during the install, and then if > the user doesn't want to have it as ext3 they can just remove the (unused) > journal via "tune2fs -O ^has_journal" at that time? Stephen, are you > listening? ;-) The alternative would be to have tune2fs -j create a hidden journal in the first place. That would require some kernel help, though. > > Given the number of questions we've received about the .journal file, > > it just might be worth cluttering the kernel with the code to move the > > journal to the hidden inode.... > > Hmm, what would be involved for the kernel code? If we caught it between > journal recovery, but before the journal was busy, No, you want to do it once the journal is initialised and running, so that on a crash, recovery will work to make the update atomic, keeping all bitmaps and group descriptors in sync. > Sadly, the ext3 code opens the journal of a filesystem even when it is a > read-only mount, rather than opening it only when the fs is mounted > read-write, so it would not be possible to restrict this to when the fs is > mounted read-only. That has caused me some headaches in the past as well. > > Maybe it is time that we change ext3 so that we still do a journal > recovery for a read-only mount (on rw media), but then close the journal > again until we do a real read-write mount? Recovery requires genuine filesystem write activity: we need to be able to do orphan cleanup. Closing the journal after that is possible, definitely: the locking code required to quiesce the journal is all already there. Cheers, Stephen
