linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2] initramfs: print error and shell out for unsupported content

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Date:	Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:55:17 -0700
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Alexander Holler <holler@...oftware.de>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] initramfs: print error and shell out for unsupported
 content

On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:49:57 +0100 Alexander Holler <holler@...oftware.de> wrote:

> Am 21.03.2014 22:03, schrieb Andrew Morton:
> > On Thu, 20 Mar 2014 23:00:45 +0100 Alexander Holler <holler@...oftware.de> wrote:
> > 
> >> The initramfs generation is broken for file and directory names which contain
> >> colons or spaces. Print an error and don't try to continue.
> 
> > It would be better to fix the it-doesnt-work-with-all-filenames bug. 
> > Any details on that?
> 
> IMHO not worth the time. The whole process which is curently used is
> extremly fragile.
> 
> E.g it's almost guaranteed to fail trying to include arbitrary filenames
> as dependencies in a Makefile. Besides the one problem I've discoverd
> with colons, there could be much more things happen, e.g. with filenames
> which do include other special Makefile characters you all would have to
> escape correctly.
> 
> And the problem with spaces isn't as easy to fix as it first does look
> like. I think it might be easier to write the whole stuff new instead of
> trying to escape the spaces in various ways needed to end up correctly
> in the cpio (it first goes through shell code and is then feeded as some
> list to a C program).
> 
> And I think that just isn't worth the time. Using find | cpio works just
> fine to generate a cpio archive and usually an initramfs just contains
> some megabytes. So it isn't a problem at all to rebuild the complete
> cpio archive with every call of make, it doesn't need much more than
> about a second or similiar on almost any machine.
> 
> And for the records, I indeed had a deeper look, trying to fix it. But,
> as said, quickly realized that it will need too much effort and doesn't
> make sense, if it will be doable correctly at all.
> 

huh, OK.

Should we check for \t and \n as well?
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