Re: mounting unpartitioned drives

Grant R. Guenther (grant@torque.net)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 17:45:07 -0500 (EST)


> > It might be worthwhile opening a debate about some method for telling a
> > driver not to both with a partition scan. A boot option or /proc
> > interface might do the trick:
> Uh??
> If the drive is removable (else why should you get "Media Changed") You
> MUST do a partition scan.

Says who ?

> The requested partition is usually different on the new media and might
> not exist at all.

Precisely. The current algorithm _always_ does the partition scan - and
can produce noise, or misleading results.

> I know removable media is usually formatted as a single partition (You
> can even make a filesystem on the raw device), but checking what's
> actually on the media is (IMHO) an absolute "must".

Why ? I have a hard time imagining a serious risk here. If the user has
turned off partition checking and inserted a partitioned disk, it won't
mount.

That said, Itai's idea of a lazy partition scan seems sensible, and
can probably be implemented in the individual drivers without too much fuss.

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Grant R. Guenther grant@torque.net
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