From: Andreas Dilger <adilger@sun.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC 1/2] ext4 resize: Mark the added group with
	EXT4_BG_INODE_ZEROED flag
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:09:44 -0700
Message-ID: <20081127230944.GO3186@webber.adilger.int>
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Cc: Solofo.Ramangalahy@bull.net, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org
To: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
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On Nov 27, 2008  17:35 -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> Unfortunately, we've been shipping mke2fs in e2fsprogs that sets the
> EXT4_BG_INODE_ZERO for newly created filesystem, and if the
> lazy_itable_init configuration parameter is set, it doesn't initialize
> the inode table and leaves bg_flags set to EXT2_BG_INODE_UNINIT and
> EXT2_BG_BLOCK_UNINIT. 
> 
> Distributions are already shipping e2fsprogs with this, and there are
> ext4 filesystems out there in the wild, so it is indeed probably way
> too late to change this.

I suppose it would be possible to add a new flag and deprecate the old
INODE_ZERO usage after a couple of years.  Until we start doing anything
with the kernel we've done everything with mke2fs to zero the inode table,
so that would be a reasonable assumption for the kernel to make.

I agree that having the flag with the opposite meaning would have been
better, but hindsight is 20-20.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.