Nathan, yeah. I agree. I have submitted a lilo patch to do just that
(not allowing itself to install onto a XFS partition). But, it seems
there are going to be folks not subscribed to the list that may
unknowingly install lilo in that manner.
On Mon, 2002-03-25 at 22:56, Nathan Scott wrote:
> hi,
>
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 09:50:14PM -0600, Derek James Witt wrote:
> > Hey all.
> >
> > I'm going through the kernel source for XFS and I'm trying to find out
> > how many superblocks a partition usually has and the maximum it's
> > allowed to have.
>
> There is one superblock at the head of every allocation group.
> xfs_info/xfs_db/... will show you how many allocation groups a
> filesystem has. There is one primary superblock, in the first
> AG (at offset zero); and any number of secondary superblocks -
> the number of AGs is a mkfs time option.
>
> The primary superblock is the one the kernel uses at all times.
> The secondary superblocks are usually only written at mkfs time,
> and are read by xfs_repair when reconstructing the primary SB.
>
> > So far in xfs_mount.h, I'm seeing that we are allowed
> > two superblocks. I am proposing that we have two consecutive primary
> > superblocks (duplicates) in use. In other words, mirrored blocks.
>
> I'll leave it for others to judge the relative merits of this,
> my first thought is that it seems overly complex when the answer
> should be "don't overwrite the SB in the first place".
>
> > So, if lilo or any other boot loader comes along and overwrites a part
> > of the first superblock, the mounting code can still get at the 2nd sb.
>
> I think the operational model here should remain "run xfs_repair"
> once you've blown your foot off... but, just my 2c.
>
> > But, the problem is that the size of the superblock I've seen varies
> > from 512 bytes to 65535 bytes. In lilo's sources, we got blocks of size
> > 1024 and sector sizes of 512. Any ideas on what to do on this?
>
> The XFS superblock fits within 512 bytes.
>
> cheers.
>
> --
> Nathan
>
--
** Derek J Witt **
* Email: mailto:djw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx *
* Home Page: http://www.flinthills.com/~djw/ *
*** "...and on the eighth day, God met Bill Gates." - Unknown **
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