Re: [patch] grub incorrectly identifies ext3 as fat

[Andrew Clausen]

Hi Robert,

Sorry, I didn't follow up on your suggestion before (my mail program
didn't highlight it properly).

I had some bad luck: I can no longer reproduce the problem with any
version of grub.  This is a surprise to me, since my file system is 2
years old.

Anyway, I just want to restate some points that I think got confused
in the earlier discussion:

(1) If we improve the detection code in kern/fs.c, it fixes both the
boot time AND the grub-probe detection.

(2) I think it's important to have good detection not just in
grub-probe, but also at boot time.  When loading in the kernel,
initrd, and so on, grub needs to know which file system to use.  It
got confused when I had both fat and ext2 modules loaded.  (I
eventually got it to boot by typing "rmmod fat" first.)

Cheers,
Andrew

2009/11/9 Robert Millan <address@hidden>:
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 08:15:56PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 02:43:19PM -0400, Andrew Clausen wrote:
>> > > Or we can attempt to read a given file when we expect it's there.  For
>> > > example, if we're looking for /boot/grub/, we can tell "/boot/grub" to 
>> > > the
>> > > filesystem layer, so that it will require it as a precondition.
>> >
>> > I can see that that would work will for some use cases...
>>
>> Most importantly, it's a net win.  If we know a file is there, there's no
>> harm in requiring that the filesystem driver is capable of reading it.
>>
>> It's a pity, because we already had this check, and we were forced to
>> disable it.  Would you like to help us restore it?  I can give more details.
>
> Btw, the grub-probe check has just been reenabled in our experimental
> branch (see http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-2-download.en.html).
>
> Perhaps you could test it and report if it fixes your problem?
>
> --
> Robert Millan
>
>  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
>  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
>  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."
>