Anaconda, grub and XFS

[Daniel Spratlen]

On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 09:39 -0500, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
> On Friday 07 October 2005 09:28, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 17:24 +0100, James Pearson wrote:
> > > There has been an on going issue with installing grub on an XFS
> > > partition - anaconda will hang at the installing boot loader stage as
> > > grub 'spins'.
> > >
> > > The attached patch for 'booty' works round this problem by remounting
> > > the XFS file system that contains /boot as read-only and then as
> > > read-write before running the grub install command.
> > >
> > > This patch replaces the current XFS freeze/thaw work round that fails to
> > > work (a lot) more often than not.
> >
> > This feels like a hack for the fact that xfs_freeze doesn't work as it
> > was designed to -- it is specifically for things which need the contents
> > on disk to actually be what the kernel thinks is there.  And the
> > continued need of random hacks like this make me more and more inclined
> > to just disallow the use of XFS as a bootable filesystem.
> >
> > Jeremy
> I regularly use XFS as a filesystem for /  and /home  and other areas  but 
> because of this bug  i always use ext3 for /  and really for the use of boot  
> and the size of the files in there  /boot is much better off being on ext3    
> so i would say make it so /boot has to be ext3.  then you should only hit 
> this issue  if someone decides to forgo a /boot partition 
> 
> Dennis
> 

I disagree.  XFS can be used as a filesystem for /boot and there is no
reason that Fedora should impose artificial limitations on the use of
XFS.  Don't limit the use of a filesystem because GRUB makes some
incorrect assumptions about being able to read a block device image
while a filesystem is mounted and actively being written to.  Why not
have anaconda force users who want to use XFS for /boot to setup grub
post install rather than have anaconda not allow /boot to be XFS.

Daniel Spratlen