---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 14:57:54 +0000 (GMT)
From: Riley Williams <rhw@bigfoot.com>
To: Chris Siebenmann <cks@utcc.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: IDE -> ATA DISK
Hi Chris.
> You write:
>> Most Unix tools include basic sanity checks, and that's one area
>> where the Linux kernel could be improved. The following sanity
>> check should not be that hard to do:
>> Q> Complain if the configuration selects file systems without
>> Q> also selecting somewhere to mount them, as there's little
>> Q> point to a kernel supporting (say) ext2 without supporting
>> Q> any form of disk drive to use it on.
> I think this should be at most a warning; it should not be a fatal
> error. It's possible to boot such a kernel using an initrd, after
> all.
I'd agree there, but the current configure scripts make it nigh on
impossible to produce effective warning messages, but very easy to
produce error messages.
> The other warnings I can think of offhand that might be useful are:
> - no non-modular binfmt (or perhaps it should be more
> restricted than that, not counting java or the like that
> requires another binfmt module to get very far)
> - no non-modular filesystem
> maybe
> - no initrd support when there is no non-modular disk driver
> and any 'prerequisites' of things selected as non-modular (such as
> say NFS non-modular without non-modular networking).
It's been suggested to me that this sort of thing would be best
implemented as a separate "make checksane" step in the compilation
that produces a report of any questionable option combinations, and I
tend to agree with that, so will be looking into doing that over the
Christmas break...
Best wishes from Riley.
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