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Date:      Thu, 6 May 1999 15:02:38 -0500 (CDT)
From:      David Scheidt <dscheidt@enteract.com>
To:        Zhihui Zhang <zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Copies of superblocks in FFS
Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.3.96.990506145000.47110B-100000@shell-1.enteract.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.990506145327.15238A-100000@sol.cs.binghamton.edu>

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On Thu, 6 May 1999, Zhihui Zhang wrote:

:If the primary superblock (the second copy in cylinder group 0, at offset
:8192+8192) is updated and other superblocks are not updated at the same
:time, how can any of other copies be used to restore file system in case
:that the primary copy is corrupted somehow?  If so, the performance will
:be degraded.

Most of what is in the superblock is static, and doesn't change from 
filesystem creation time.  The things that don't can be created from the disk,
at fsck time.  fsck -b has saved a lot of filesystems, and is clearly worth 
a few wasted blocks.   
:
:Also, except for the root filesystem (/), all other filesystems (/var,
:/usr, etc.) do not have the (boot code + disklabel) installed, these space
:are also wasted (8192 bytes for each non-root filesystem).

It is very handy to be able to make a filesytem bootable after it has been 
created.   Much easier than dumping the filesytem, remaking the filesytem, and 
then restoring it.  I'll pay 16K per filesystem for this.
:
:BTW, the hard disks are more stable nowadays and any bad sectors may have
:been hidden by the disk controllers (the filesystem does not have to deal
:with them). 

Panics still can leave the primary superblock hosed.  Trust me.  

David Scheidt



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