On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 05:32:17AM +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote: > [ Poke Steve. ] > > Andreas Bombe <a...@debian.org> (2016-05-11): > > On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 02:15:42PM +0200, Andreas Bombe wrote: > > > Since 416 blocks is a rather odd value, the default is used and that has > > > changed. I think mtools is overzealous in checking those values and > > > refusing to work. Still, it probably makes sense to use 64/32 as the > > > default for smaller filesystem sizes (up to 512 MB possibly) and I'll > > > prepare a version that implements this. > > > > Uploading this now. > > > > As far as I'm concerned, I consider this an aesthetic change. There is > > still no guarantee that the total number of sectors is a multiple of > > sectors per track. It just happens to work with the current values. > > Steve → we probably don't want to be hardcoding such things in so many > places right? 3 calls in src:debian-installer, plus debian-cd, and maybe > others?
In my opinion all that effort to placate mtools is the quintessential tail wagging the dog. I don't know the installer environment, but disabling those checks in /etc/mtools.conf or ~/.mtoolsrc would be the way to go. > > If you want to make this robust, you'll either have to explicitly > > specify matched size/sectors/heads on the command line to mkfs.msdos or > > disable the bogus mtools check like everyone else does when encountering > > that error. > > Thanks for your input and the proposed change. > > I think Steven mentioned (when we first diagnosed this) a possibly > bogus/overzealous check on mtools side as well. You seem to agree. So, > if this check is bogus, why not fix it/remove it upstream then? Upstream for mtools does not seem to be particularly active, last release was in 2013. The problem with this check is that it is at best a heuristic. Total sectors not being a multiple of sectors per track means that some sectors in the last track are left unused. And nobody would just waste some of the scarce space on a floppy, right? That might indicate something is fishy, but it's not an actual error. It's definitely meaningless in the linear addressing case of larger disks where the 255/63 dummy values are used. > > Seriously, searching for that error message in your favorite search > > engine will give you pages upon pages of hits, all of them describing > > how to turn it off. > > Seriously, I read the man^Winfo page and implemented a workaround in > src:debian-installer already. I didn't mean to come across as sarcastic or whatever, I just wanted to note how there are so many people affected by this while I couldn't find anyone treating it as anything but a nuisance error. So yeah, the consensus seems to be it's a bogus check. Andreas
