summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/TODO
blob: dea4052775cf6231140e62e90852a76f2e07a2f8 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
build-sys
--------

 - we use something like

	AC_ARG_ENABLE(...., enable_foo=check)
	build_foo=yes
	if test "x$enable_foo" = xcheck; then
		if test "x$linux_os" = xno; then
			build_foo=no
		fi
	fi
	AM_CONDITIONAL(BUILD_LIBMOUNT, test "x$build_foo" = xyes)

   for Linux-only utils in configure.ac. It would be nice to set all defaults
   for all $enable_ variables at begin of the configure script according to
   $linux_os. Something like:

	if test "x$linux_os" = xno
		enable_mount=no
		enable_libmount=no
		enable_lsblk=no
	fi

   then we can remove all "if test "x$enable_foo" = xcheck;" stuff from the rest
   of the configure script.

 - it would be nice to remove all "if BUILD_LIB{MOUNT,BLKID,UUID}" from the 
   Makefiles (e.g. misc-utils/Makefile.am) and use BUILD_<utilname> only

   The configure.ac has to care about dependence between utils and librares and
   enable BUILD_<utilname>.

fsprobe
-------

 - remove the lib/fsprobe.c wrapper for libblkid used in mount and fsck. Use
   everywhere libblkid from util-linux only.
 - update ./configure script

login-utils:
-----------

 - use err() and warn() macros rather than fprintf(stderr, ...)

losetup
-------

 - don't use ioclts if sysfs supports loop attributes (since 2.6.37,
   block/loopN/loop/* files)

    - don't open loopdev in looplist_next(), check if /sys/block/loopN/loop
      exists and returns ll.name rather than file descriptor

    - add sysfs based version of show_loop() and use it for non-root users

sysfs
-----

 - add lib/sysfs.c with functions that read block device attributes from /sys.
   For more details see devno.c from libblkid, lsblk.c and lomount.c.

lib/tt.c
--------

 - allows to sort columns, for example sort lsblk(8) output by SIZE

libblkid
--------

 - remove strerrr() from debug messages (use %m) to make BLKID_DEBUG= output
   thread-safe

 - add -<BE|LE> suffix to test images for native-endian filesystems (e.g. swap)
   and add support for such functionality to tests/ts/blkid/low-probe

 - add FSSIZE value  -- filesystem size (klibc requirement)

 - add support for dasd PT (used for example on s390)


blkid(8)
-------

  - add something like "blkid --list-known" to list all supported filesystems/raids
 
  - add a new option (-r) that allows to print removable block devices that
    are missing in /proc/partitions, see blkid_probe_all_removable().

agetty:
------

  - review code and make it more simple for normal console (see mingetty)
  - merge functionality from unmaintained mingetty package to agetty

wipefs
------

 - some filesystem (namely FAT) contains more magic strings, so if you erase
   one magic string the FS is still detectable by libblkid. We have to inform
   users that there is more valid magic string for the same FS.

fdisk(s)
--------

 * sfdisk has to use rpmatch() for answers to y/n questions
   (e.g. "Are you satisfied with this? [ynq]")

 * sfdisk rounds to cylinders is -uM (megabyte units) is specified, this is
   pretty stupid feature. It has to round to sectors if -uS or -uM is specified.

 * Sun label support is completely useless for large disks, it uses number of
   cylinders from on-disk-label where the geometry is stored by int16 values.
   It seems better to completely ignore this stuff from the label and always
   use geometry + BLKGETSIZE64 from kernel.

 * use off_t instead "long long"

 * catch SIGINT (Ctrl-C) and return to main menu.
   From Red Hat bugzilla #545488:

   While using fdisk normally, if you accidentally pressed the wrong button (to
   start a sequence of questions for some operation, e.g. 'c' to create
   partition).  The tool tries too hard to keep asking you for valid input.  You
   can't provide a blank or invalid input to get it to break out of the current
   dialog sequence and get back to the main menu.

 * fdisk/* refactoring

 * add GPT support (probably implement libfdisk)

misc
----

 * switch_root:
     - move all mountpoints to the newroot (there are hardcoded /proc /sys and /dev paths now)
     - add --dont-move[=<list of dirs>] options

 * use ngettext() for strings with plurals, for example

    /* include/nls.h */
    #define P_(id, id_plural, n)	ngettext(id, id_plural, n)

    printf(P_("%d used sector",
              "%d used sectors", sectors),
              sectors);

 * use something better than gtk-doc (doxyden?)

 * use TZ=UTC and LANG=en_US.UTF-8 for tests

 * add NLS and err.h stuff to schedutils (chrt.c, taskset.c)

 * add mllockall() and SCHED_FIFO to hwclock,
   see http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/12/132
 
 * use rpmatch() for all Y/N questions

 * make chrt, taskset, ... threads aware. Currently these utils work with
   group leader (master thread) and don't propagate requested changes to 
   the whole group of threads.  It meas add a new option (e.g. -t):

	chrt <prio> <pid>     # master thread only
        chrt -t <prio> <pid>  # whole group of threads

  Note that we need to scan /proc and call ched_set{scheduler,affinity}
  syscalls for all individual threads.

 * umount by label:
	# mount LABEL=mylabel
	# umount LABEL=mylabel

 * mount -a -- reorder fstab entries by paths before mount (just idea only)

 * mount -a  (just idea only)

        Date:   Sun, 3 Jun 2007 18:04:24 +0300 (MET DST)
        From: Szabolcs Szakacsits <szaka@sienet.hu>

	In the past the right record order could be figured out easily by just
	checking out fstab (if one knew what to look for) but considering the
	fastly increasing number of user space file systems and their usage, with
	their path, library, etc dependencies, it's getting trickier and is a black
	magic for most users because they simply expect drives to be mounted
	independently of their order in fstab.

	One typical, wrongly edited fstab example is:

	  /dev/hda2 /             ext3      defaults  1 1
	  /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows  ntfs-3g   defaults  0 0
	  /dev/hda3 /usr          ext3      defaults  0 0

	The events:

	  mount  ->  /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g  ->
		 ->  resolves to <path1>/ntfs-3g via a symlink ->
		 ->  ntfs-3g requires at least <path2>/libfuse*

	There are many potential solutions. For example installing everything on
	the root file system which may be needed for successful mount. But this
	is not always feasible or practical since we could end up putting almost
	everything on the root file system in the end.

	Another idea is an improved mount strategy:

	  do {
		try to mount all unmounted entries
	  } while (not all mounted && at least one new was successfully mounted)

 * rewrite ipcs to use /proc/sys/kernel rather than unreliable syscalls
   (there are problems with 32bit userspace on 64bit kernel)

 * minix v3

	From: Matthias Koenig <mkoenig@suse.de>
	Date:   Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:00:01 +0200

	It seems that the kernel has support for minix fs v3
	(though I have not tried it, just inspected some code when
	trying to find a mkfs.minix issue).
	It might be worth a thought implementing v3 support
	(though I am not really sure how much people us minix fs ;-)
	This might require some major code cleanup in mkfs.minix.

 * add SELinux security contexts support to the 'ipcs' utility
   http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=225342

   Would be great to list the current system IPC Objects with their respective
   security labels (where allowed) with something like 'ipcs -Z' - following the
   way other tools reports those.