Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 13:51:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@MIT.EDU> To: Garrett Cooper <yanegomi@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: aliasing (or renaming) kern.geom.debugflags Message-ID: <alpine.GSO.1.10.1110071349180.882@multics.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <CAGH67wTrr%2B_oS961Dx9g_KfJjHrX8g0SpqXqG_OurEqhnhdQbQ@mail.gmail.com> References: <alpine.GSO.1.10.1110071341430.882@multics.mit.edu> <CAGH67wTrr%2B_oS961Dx9g_KfJjHrX8g0SpqXqG_OurEqhnhdQbQ@mail.gmail.com>
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On Fri, 7 Oct 2011, Garrett Cooper wrote: > On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@mit.edu> wrote: >> Dear all, >> >> I feel like this has come up before, but a quick search didn't reveal >> anything terribly recent, at least. >> >> The new installation chapter of the handbook for 9.0 (that Warren and Glen >> and Garrett and Gavin and more people I am probably missing have sunk huge >> amounts of time into) has instructions on (e.g.) preparing a USB stick >> install image: >> http://www.glenbarber.us/FreeBSD9/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-pre.html >> (scroll down most of the way). But in order to do so, the instructions >> include 'sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16'! Now, an ordinary user who is >> doing this for the first time might ask, "why do I need to do something with >> 'debugflags' in order to make a USB stick? I'm not debugging anything, this >> is a standard operation!". >> >> I can't really advocate for changing the geom logic at this point in the >> release cycle (though it's not really clear why rank 1 geom providers need >> to be so special), but I think it would be nice to have a user-visible >> interface to it that does not have "debug" in the name, since the actual >> flags are apparently here for the long haul. I could certainly imagine >> aliasing the debugflags to just "flags", which seems more >> innocuous-sounding. >> >> Does this sound crazy? > > Yes. From geom(4): > > DIAGNOSTICS > Several flags are provided for tracing GEOM operations and unlocking pro- > tection mechanisms via the kern.geom.debugflags sysctl. All of these > flags are off by default, and great care should be taken in turning them > on. > > geom(4) has more details about what they do. I'm not sure I follow your point. Yes, geom(4) describes what they do; my objection is to the use of "debug" to describe the one in particular that we tell new users to blindly set. A hypothetical kern.geom.flags need not allow setting (e.g.) "0x01 (G_T_TOPOLOGY) Provide tracing of topology change events" if we don't want it to. -Benhome | help
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