[arch-releng] btrfs support in aif

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Tue, 7 Dec 2010 14:34:02 -0600
C Anthony Risinger <anthony at extof.me> wrote:

> i have some other responses to this message, but this for now...
> 
> On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Dieter Plaetinck
> <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> >
> > This is why softraid hasn't been implemented yet, nor btrfs.
> > Also, I'm not very familiar with either one (although I am pretty
> > interested in btrfs).
> > I would need to know the most common/recommended use cases, and
> > figure out the best way to implement them.
> > Or maybe just provide a few predefined wizards for specific setups
> > (but there are so many possibilities this would be unfeasible, I
> > think)
> >
> > Or I need to take a different approach (see a bit above)
> 
> what if we created some kind of udev/blkid/etc. approach?  ie. we
> write some custom udev rules to manage a special directory/update
> files/touch files/run scripts/etc... as the system changes udev would
> make sure AIF knows what the actual state is.

interesting idea. but if aif really wants to know the current state, it
can just query (fdisk -l, ls /dev/mapper/*, <btrfs command>, etc etc)
 
> i'm not super adept in the rules syntax, but i know enough to be
> dangerous.

the syntax is a bit ugly right now, to keep aif code relatively simple.

> it seems like we could leverage it in some way to take
> care of all the dirty work... AIF just needs to monitor the <insert
> here>, and verify against an identical copy it creates during the
> install.  this would also let AIF adapt to any outside changes made my
> the user with some grace.
> 
> C Anthony

let's not create additional problems. if you suggest to make aif "spot"
changes made by the user, it still needs to be able to work with that,
so there needs to be a model for it. we can better implement the model
and dialogs for btrfs support to work, without worrying about the
"detecting realtime changes" if we don't really need it.

let me know if my previous explanation was clear, and if you want more
info about something.

Dieter