On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:04:23PM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote: > On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 09:36:38AM +0100, Lukáš Czerner wrote: > > On Thu, 14 Feb 2013, Chris Murphy wrote: > > > > > Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:29:59 -0700 > > > From: Chris Murphy <li...@colorremedies.com> > > > To: Dave Chinner <da...@fromorbit.com> > > > Cc: Karel Zak <k...@redhat.com>, Lukáš Czerner <lczer...@redhat.com>, > > > x...@oss.sgi.com, sand...@redhat.com, Zach Brown <zabr...@redhat.com>, > > > linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org > > > Subject: Re: [PATCH] xfs_mkfs: wipe old signatures from the device
> > So I > > think that it got to the point where users will usually use mkfs.xfs > > -f all the time. And even if they did not and they would use a wrong > > device they would probably get the same warning even for the device > > they wanted to use in the first place. > > I get a couple of queries a year from people saying they > accidentally ran mkfs.ext4 on the wrong device and want to know if > they can recover their XFS filesystem. The next question is usually > "why didn't mkfs.ext4 warn me there was an existing filesystem on > the device like mkfs.xfs does?". > > That is why the "don't overwrite an existing filesystem by default" > behaviour is important. Users like to be protected from mistakes > they weren't aware they made, and far too few of our filesystem > utilities provide that safety net. > > A couple of users a year losing data like this is a couple of users > too many. Especially when it would only take a couple of hours of > your time to implement.... > > > So even thoug it might help in some cases I do not think that we > > should go and change all file systems to do that as well, it would > > not be very useful anyway. > > Tell that to the next user that trashes their data because a > filesystem tool simply assumed in correctly that it owned the block > device. We had someone on IRC a day or two ago who had done exactly this. They're not the only one -- I can recall seeing at least one other person who managed to mkfs.btrfs on an existing filesystem. Hugo. -- === Hugo Mills: hugo@... carfax.org.uk | darksatanic.net | lug.org.uk === PGP key: 515C238D from wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net or http://www.carfax.org.uk --- I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I --- know a hawk from a handsaw.
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