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Date:      Thu, 27 Jan 2000 08:37:08 +1030
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Mike Wade <mwade@cdc.net>
Cc:        "Jeffrey S. Sharp" <jss@subatomix.com>, freebsd-small <freebsd-small@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Mounting flash file systems (was: your mail)
Message-ID:  <20000127083708.A44457@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.10.10001260957410.4247-100000@server2>
References:  <002201bf67c6$f76b4090$0dea5e18@mmcable.com> <Pine.GSO.4.10.10001260957410.4247-100000@server2>

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On Wednesday, 26 January 2000 at 10:03:08 -0500, Mike Wade wrote:
> On 26 Jan 2000, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:
>
>> Therefore, I suggest something like what Warner has done (and that I am
>> working on as time permits), where the flash is the root fs and /tmp,
>> /var, and so on are mounted as small MFS filesystems.  The flash is
>> normally kept mounted read-only.  Then, instead of running an update
>> script, one simply remounts the flash read-write, makes changes, and
>> remounts read-only.
>
> I've attempted this and I ended up with a filesystem of corrupted files
> when mounting read-only, remounting read-write, then remounting read-only
> several times.  I ended up partitioning the flash and creating a read-only
> binary partition and a read/write config partition that is mounted only on
> update.
>
>> From the mount man page:
>
> BUGS
>      It is possible for a corrupted file system to cause a crash.
>      Switching a filesystem back and forth between asynchronous and normal
>      operation or between read/write and read/only access using ``mount
>      -u'' may gradually bring about severe filesystem corruption.

This doesn't fit.  You didn't say you were changing your file systems
between synchronous and asynchronous.  That's the key of this
particular problem.

> It would be very nice to have this feature when dealing with flash.
> Also it would be nice to have a "accidental power off" safe file
> system when using hard drives for embedded devices such as Internet
> Appliances.

I still think that a R/O file system would beat any of these.  If you
have to mount R/W, leave it that way until reboot.

Greg
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