Re: GEOM architecture and the (lack of) need for foot-shooting

From: Andrey Chernov <ache_at_nagual.pp.ru>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 11:14:39 +0400
On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 11:51:03PM -0700, Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
> >F.e. one can temporary remove whole BSD partition for other OS better
> >install, then re-create it again inside other OS.
> 
> I don't see how this is illegal. It's exactly the thing you don't want
> to prevent for no good reason. It's a dangerous operation if you don't
> know what you're doing but other than that can be a real handy feature.

I mean it becomes illegal when synced from on-disk to in-core - whole 
working space disappearse. This is example why on-disk->in-core sync is 
dangerous while in-core->on-disk is always safe.

> But if a file system goes beyond the boundaries of a partition, you
> don't need to increase the partition to get to the files. They were
> written there despite the partition boundaries. Not to mention that
> you can just read the adjacent partition to read the raw sectors.
> No, your example isn't a good one.

Oh, this is real life example. And I mean FAT32 or NTFS (I don't remember 
right now, one year passed) as a filesystem, not UFS. And I mean not 
recover files goes beyound (there just was incorrect sector numbers, not 
data written) but old files. The problem was that it simple not mounted by 
Windows without such partition surgery. "Unmountable boot volume".

> Why would you ever allow a partition table to contain overlapping 
> partitions?

For surgery purposes. Consider this like fsdb(8).

> Inconsistencies (i.e. overlaps) can exist between the on-disk and 
> in-core data,

Yes.

> but never in the on-disk table by itself or in the in-core data by 
> itself.
> Right?

Not quite right. I want inconsistencies in on-disk table (with warnings 
and (Y/N) confirmations etc.) because of surgery. But not in the in-core 
table, because it is live running and could lead only to more chaos.

-- 
http://ache.pp.ru/
Received on Fri Apr 08 2005 - 05:14:43 UTC

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