Re: Partions (or lack thereof) and xfs repair

[Seth Mos <seth.mos@xxxxxxxxx>]

AndyLiebman@xxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi, 

> But does the fact that I don't run fdisk on the device, and the lack of at 
> least a single partition, in any way making the xfs file system vulnerable? 

No, not really.

However, the XFS superblock lives on sector 0 of the partition or sector 
0 of the device if you don't have any.

If you write a partition table, whatever sort, even empty, this will 
destroy the superblock and make the filesystem unmountable.

xfs_repair would search out an alternate superblock and could even 
restore it theoretically.

I don't see what advantage the "no partition" approach has except not 
knowing what is actually on the disk. And shooting yourself in the foot 
is easy, just one disk utility that asks to write a disk signature will 
destroy it.

It was probably to circumvent 1 or 2 TB limits that broke some utility. 
Fdisk and most others go up to 2TB, beyond is special and requires 2.6.x

This works similar to assigning raw disk devices to databases and 
letting a co worker thinking there is still disk space there since there 
is nothing on it :-(

Cheers