On Fri, 14 Nov 2025, Clément Chigot wrote:
On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 8:43 AM Markus Armbruster <[email protected]> wrote:
Kevin Wolf <[email protected]> writes:
Am 10.11.2025 um 14:20 hat Markus Armbruster geschrieben:
BALATON Zoltan <[email protected]> writes:
On Mon, 10 Nov 2025, Clément Chigot wrote:
On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 11:07 AM Markus Armbruster <[email protected]> wrote:
Clément Chigot <[email protected]> writes:
This option tells whether a hard disk should be partitioned or not. It
defaults to true and have the prime effect of preventing a master boot
record (MBR) to be initialized.
This is useful as some operating system (QNX, Rtems) don't
recognized FAT mounted disks (especially SD cards) if a MBR is present.
Signed-off-by: Clément Chigot <[email protected]>
[...]
Not sure I like "partitioned". Is a disk with an MBR and a partition
table contraining a single partition partitioned? Call it "mbr"?
It used to be called "mbr/no-mbr" but Kevin suggested renaming it in
V1. Honestly I'm fine with both options:
- Technically, the option prevents MBR which has a side effect for
preventing partition tables
Yes, because the partition table is part of the MBR. I'd rather name
the option after the entire thing it controls, not one of its parts.
- Even it has a single partition, I think it makes sense to call a
disk "partitioned" as long as it has a partition table
But I'm not that familiar with disk formats, etc. I'll let you decide
with Kevin, which one you prefer.
Kevin is the maintainer, I just serve as advisor here.
I figured that the meaning of "partitioned" is easier to understand for
a casual user than having or not having an MBR ("I don't want to boot
from this disk, why would I care about a boot record?").
Fair point.
Possible counter-points:
* The default is almost always right for the casual user. The
exception, as far as I understand, is certain guest OSes refuse to
play ball with certain devices when they have an MBR.
* The configuration interface isn't exactly casual-user-friendly to
begin with. @fat-type, what's that, and why do I care? @floppy,
what's that, and why do I care?
Anyway, you decide.
AFAICT, there are two open questions for that patch:
1. "mbr" vs "partitioned".
I do think "partitioned" is clearer, a bit more casual friendly. "mbr"
requires knowledge about FAT format, while what's a partition should
be known by a wider audience.
Side note, in V3, I'll remove the "unpartitioned" keyword to simply
replace it by "partitoned=false" (I wasn't aware such an obvious
possibility was working...). So we might even call it
"partition/partitions=true|false".
2. The default value. Should it be "false" for @floppy ?
IMO, having a default value independent of other arguments is always
better. Hence, I'll push for keeping "partitioned=true" as the
default, and having users forcing "partitioned=false" for floppy (an
error being raised otherwise). As we'll probably change the default
behavior with floppy anyway (cf patch 2), I don't think it will hurt a
lot to make users passing a new flag.
Combined with the option called partinioned=false that's quite unfriendly
for users trying to type a command line. Maybe not many do but those who
don't also don't care about what are the defaults or if it's called mbr or
partitioned as whatever generates the command line for them takes care
of that. So I'm still for user friendly CLI but I also don't care enough
to insist more if others don't think it's worth to keep this user friendly
for command line users.
There was another question if the fat-size option is really needed or it
could just use size if the default format=raw was changed to behave like
format=vvfat if file=fat: is given which I think would make more sense
than only truncating the underlying raw format that's not even needed to
be there but I don't know how difficult it is to implement this or the
default format=raw is hard coded and hard to change for fat: protocol.
So in summary:
1. format=vvfat,size=xMB was said to work so could file=fat:/dir,size=xMB
imply format=vvfat so it would also work? Then no other size option is
needed.
2. Having different defaults for floppy or disk would keep existing
command lines working. Otherwise why not make partitioned=false the
default and let users who need it set explicitly. That would also work for
most cases without having to type out this option.
Regards,
BALATON Zoltan
