linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH] e2fsprogs: misc: Remove broken whole device check

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <20150615040542.GE15793@thunk.org>
Date:	Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:05:42 -0400
From:	Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
To:	Andreas Dilger <adilger@...ger.ca>
Cc:	Richard Yao <ryao@...too.org>, linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org,
	Richard Yao <richard.yao@...sterhq.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] e2fsprogs: misc: Remove broken whole device check

On Mon, Jun 01, 2015 at 04:56:45PM -0600, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Jun 1, 2015, at 4:39 PM, Richard Yao <ryao@...too.org> wrote:
> > 
> > From: Richard Yao <richard.yao@...sterhq.com>
> > 
> > Modern Linux major/minor numbering on block devices no longer conform to
> > the divisible by 64 rule for minor numbering. On my development system,
> > the correct number is 16. Consequently, this applies only to every 4th
> > drive on a modern system, which is inconsistent. That caused the
> > following bug to be filed against Flocker:
> > 
> > https://clusterhq.atlassian.net/browse/FLOC-2041
> > 
> > We could unconditionally pass -F to override this check whenever it
> > triggers, but that it would also override the libblkid check that
> > determines whether there are existing partitions, logical volumes or
> > filesystems on the disk, which seems unwise.
> > 
> > I propose that this check be removed because passing a whole disk to
> > mke2fs is a valid use case and given how long this has been broken,
> > users are already accustomed to the behavior where -F is not necessary
> > to format a whole disk as ext4.
> 
> I totally agree - we've been overriding this check for years, and
> I'm glad to see it go.  We have other mechanisms today to avoid
> users accidentally formatting the wrong device (O_EXCL, check for
> existing filesystems in interactive mode, etc.)
> 
> Reviewed-by: Andreas Dilger <adilger@...ger.ca>

Thanks, applied.

					- Ted
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html