On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 02:09:01PM +0000, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> 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.
I have talked about it with Ted few weeks a ago. I have asked you,
because it seems that you care about Linux swap area and all
feedbacks are welcomed ;-) Anyway, I'm going to send the patch that
zap the bootbits also to linux-fsdevel. We will see...
Karel
--
Karel Zak <kzak@xxxxxxxxxx>
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