[systemd-devel] [PATCH 1/3] fstab-generator: Generate explicit dependencies on systemd-fsck at .service instead of using FsckPassNo

[Kay Sievers]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 4:29 AM, Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 01.10.13 04:19, Tom Gundersen (teg at jklm.no) wrote:
>
>> > I'd love to get rid of FsckPassNo=, but I fear that's not that
>> > easy... After all it's not just a boolean, it actually influences the
>> > ordering of the fsck. There traditionally were two documented phases
>> > which you could use to serialize multiple fsck on the same HDD
>> > but different partitions, but parallelize it on different HDDs. Now,
>> > fsck since a while can determine all that automatically these days. But
>> > still by using FsckPassNo= you get ordering deps automatically added.
>> >
>> > a) leave everything as is and FsckPassNo= does odering deps
>> >
>> > b) declare that manual passno configuration is stupid beyond treating it
>> >    as simple boolean. In thatc ase we should drop all references of
>> >    passno in the sources. Of course people might complain that we break
>> >    compat with UNIX, but well...
>> >
>> > c) Pimp up fstab-generator to write complete unit files for
>> >    fsck at .service that include the right dependencies. Meh.
>> >
>> > d) Pimp up fstab-generator to write only .d dropins that add the
>> >    necessary deps between the fsck instances, but nothing else.
>> >
>> > I think c) and a) suck. b) sounds like the best option to me. d) sounds
>> > workable too.
>> >
>> > If we go for b) then I figure people might complain that fstab(5) is not
>> > longer compatible with what systemd does?
>>
>> b) is tempting. Given fsck's improved internal ordering handling, is
>> there actually a usecase for ordering the fsck's? I can't think of any
>> off the top of my head...
>
> I struggle coming up with one. I mean, the only I could think of is "oh
> my, it always used to work that way, and it is documented that way, you
> break UNIX!", which isn't even a usecase, but just confusion.
>
> I have the suspicion that if we remove support for it, and don't tell
> anyone nobody might actually notice.
>
> So maybe we should just go ahead and change it to become a boolean only,
> and not tell anyone, and that's it? Opinions?

Things like that should probably just be automatically determined by
the machine, and not requiring a human to invent weird passes to do
the job. A boolean sounds fine to me.

Kay