24 Feb
2021
24 Feb
'21
6:50 p.m.
On 2/24/21 7:14 AM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
I wouldn't say that; I'd rather say that if
you have a huge combination
of configurations that you have to test, those configurations which
aren't regularly tested will tend to bitrot, or have odd failures
in various error cases. The more corners that you have, the more
corner cases.
Fair enough.
I would call this the "Tyrany of Gold", as
in the reformulated Golden
Rule, "The ones with the Gold, makes the Rules".
Being a fan of the golden rule, I would not make, much less use, that
derivation. I think it completely changes the meaning of the spirit
behind the golden rule.
I don't fault your logic. I just dislike where it ended up.
GRUB doesn't care. But various system
administration utilities that
want to manage to UEFI boot menu (as distinct from the GRUB boot menu),
they need to modify the files that are read by the UEFI firmware.
Valid distinction.
So it's convenient if it's mounted
*somewhere*. Also, even if it's not
mounted, it's still a partition that has to be around, and one reason
to keep it mounted is to avoid a system administrator from saying,
"hmmm, what's this unused /dev/sda1 partition? I guess I can use it
as an extra swap partition!"
I seem to recall hearing about a problem where a rogue rm could
accidentally wipe out part of the UEFI. Maybe it was the contents of
the /boot/efi partition. So, I'd suggest a happy medium of mounting it
Read-Only. That way it's known to be used /and/ it's protected from a
simple rogue rm. It can relatively easily be re-mounted as Read-Write
when necessary. As well as subsequently re-mounted back to Read-Only.
Yes, in another 5 or 10 years, we can probably
completely deprecate
the MBR-based boot sequence. At which point there will be another
series of whiners on TUHS ala the complaint that distributions are
dropping support for i386....
I feel like we've already abandoned i386 as in 80386 (or compatible)
architecture. I think we now require Pentium (586?) or better. At some
point, we'll completely remove 32-bit support from mainstream Linux
distributions, thus requiring something from the 21st century.
But since most TUHS posters aren't paying $$$ to
enterprise
distributions, most enterpise distro engineers are going to give
precisely zero f*cks. But hey, if you want to volunteer to provide
the hard work for supporting these configurations to the community
distribution, like Debian, those distros will be happy to accept the
volunteer help. :-)
~chuckle~
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die