linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH 2/3] ext4: Context support

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Message-Id: <201206150919.23484.arnd.bergmann@linaro.org>
Date:	Fri, 15 Jun 2012 09:19:23 +0000
From:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd.bergmann@...aro.org>
To:	Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre@...aro.org>
Cc:	"Ted Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
	Alex Lemberg <Alex.Lemberg@...disk.com>,
	HYOJIN JEONG <syr.jeong@...sung.com>,
	Saugata Das <saugata.das@...aro.org>,
	Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind1@...il.com>,
	Saugata Das <saugata.das@...ricsson.com>,
	linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mmc@...r.kernel.org, patches@...aro.org, venkat@...aro.org,
	"Luca Porzio (lporzio)" <lporzio@...ron.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] ext4: Context support

On Thursday 14 June 2012, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jun 2012, Ted Ts'o wrote:
>
> > The reason why I talk about making it work automatically at mke2fs
> > time is that the vast majority of created file systems (where a
> > specially created fs by a handset vendor counts as "one", even if it
> > then gets stamped on millions of devices), the end user is someone
> > naive/oblivious, so the right thing has to happen by default in the
> > common case of running mke2fs on the storage device where the file
> > system gets used.
> 
> Absolutely.  However it is fair to say that less than 0.01% of total end 
> users will even think of running mke2fs on their device.  So another 
> strategy that can be executed at run time when the fs is live would be 
> required too.

The trouble is that detecting the erase block size requires us to
write specific patterns to the device, which is generally a bad
idea after the file system has been created.

I think the best we can do is

* default to "unspecified" as before
* if "unspecified", make the file system ask the block device. in
  case of eMMC, that will usually be reliable
* Add an option to mkfs and tunefs to hardcode a specific size for
  users that know the size and can't rely on the blockdev reporting
  it correctly to the file system.
* Add an option to mkfs to autodetect the size for the drive it's
  run on.

	Arnd
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