linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] fat: mark fs as dirty on mount and clean on umount

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Message-Id: <20130102154422.53a84995.akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date:	Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:44:22 -0800
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@...l.parknet.co.jp>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	bug-track@...her-privat.net
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] fat: mark fs as dirty on mount and clean on umount

On Fri, 28 Dec 2012 02:20:20 +0900
OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@...l.parknet.co.jp> wrote:

> There is no documented methods to mark FAT as dirty. Unofficially MS
> started to use reserved Byte in boot sector for this purpose,
> at least since Win 2000. With Win 7 user is warned if fs is dirty
> and asked to clean it.
> Different versions of Win, handle it in different ways,
> but always have same meaning:
> - Win 2000 and XP, set it on write operations and
>   remove it after operation was finnished
> - Win 7, set dirty flag on first write and remove it on umount.
> 
> We will do it as fallow:
> - set dirty flag on mount. If fs was initially dirty, warn user,
>   remember it and do not do any changes to boot sector.
> - clean it on umount. If fs was initially dirty, leave it dirty.
> - do not do any thing if fs mounted read-only.
> - TODO: leave fs dirty if we found some error after mount.

The changelog doesn't describe why we're making this change.  Nor does
it describe the user-visible effects of this change.

AFAICT the effect is to issue a warning at mount-time to tell the
user that the fs wasn't cleanly unmounted and that the user should fsck
the volume, correct?

If so, why is this considered a desirable feature?  (I can guess, but
would prefer to hear it spelled out by the experts, please).

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