Re: GRUB and the risk of block list corruption in extX

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 19, 2013, at 1:47 AM, Martin Wilck <address@hidden> wrote:

> Chris,
> 
>> Effectively you're asking for indefinitely supporting GRUB 0.9, by requiring 
>> other dependencies so that can happen.
> 
> The only other dependency I am asking for is the ability for the distro
> boot loader to be installed in the root or boot partition. That's not much.

You're asking for more than you apparently realize. You said you wanted to be 
able to support KlingonFS, but your idea can't do this alone. I already used 
XFS as a real example file system that will not be bootable using your idea, 
and I see it as conclusive proof of a fundamentally broken concept.

If you want new file systems to support booting, then the primary boot loader 
needs to be able to understand that file system. 

Next, your idea requires the installer UI code to check the target file system 
before installing the boot loader. Every file system has a different location 
for this blocklist or boot loader code, there is no standardization. And in the 
case of XFS, this test fails and now you need extra UI code to indicate to the 
user that installing to an XFS partition isn't supported. And you need code 
that warns the user that even though a boot loader is being installed, that the 
installed system won't be bootable out of the box because the 1st boot loader 
doesn't know about the 2nd.

And all of this needs to be tested.

Instantly you're talking about *dozens* of people, dozens of hours of coding 
and testing. And this is because you don't want to type grub2-install --force. 
I don't understand how you think a GUI installer enabled to install in 
root/boot is "not much" and yet for you to type --force is too much?


> The biggest argument for Fedora not being able to do this has been the
> claimed danger of block list corruption.

The biggest argument is:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=872826#c10

> That's the only aspect of this discussion that is worth bothering the
> GRUB developers with. The validity of my use case should be discussed
> elsewhere.

address@hidden


Chris Murphy