H. Peter Anvin wrote: > Hi all, > > I have looked a bit at e4defrag, and it does not appear to prevent the > relocation of files marked immutable. This is a problem for boot > loaders, which may need to have a block pointer to a specific file in > order to bootstrap themselves. > > Would it be possible to either: > > a) prevent e4defrag and/or EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT from relocating an > immutable file, or > b) add a new attribute with the above property (in case there is > legitimate need to move around immutable files)? seems like the immutable flag isn't necessarily the right thing to key on; at least it's an addition to what the manpage says immutable means... > A file with the ‘i’ attribute cannot be modified: it cannot > be deleted or renamed, no link can be created to this file > and no data can be written to the file. Only the superuser > or a process possessing the CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE capability > can set or clear this attribute. Changing the physical mapping doesn't do any of those things. I think a new flag, no-move or something, may be better, if it's needed. But how many files would ever get this; maybe defragging boot files falls into the category of "don't do that?" :) -Eric > -hpa -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
