On Mon, 26 Jan 2009, Karel Zak wrote: > On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 01:20:55PM +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote: > > > BTW, there are many requests to zap bootbits area by mkswap (by > > > default when there is not a disklabel) to remove a superblock of the > > > original filesystem. Now we have very often valid swap area on a > > > valid filesystem... (Sometimes it's pretty dangerous, for example > > > some (idiotic) LiveCDs automatically call swapon when found a valid > > > swap header on disk.) > > > > I remember being caught by that kind of issue in the past (though not > > in such dangerous ways), and understand the desire for such zapping. > > But it's not something I have sufficient experience to advise on: > > I've always assumed there are strong legacy reasons why we cannot > > safely zap that area (and was surprised to see TuxOnIce doing so), > > and I hope someone with good legacy experience in Red Hat or SuSE > > can advise you. Do we have an example of a filesystem which zaps > > that area in its mkfs? > > for example mke2fs on all non-sparc archs. Excellent, that's a good precedent (though a pity if sparc were to end up as an exception). But I'm still the wrong person to advise on this. Ted Ts'o and Peter Anvin are who I'd first ask, but you may know better. Hugh -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe util-linux-ng" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
