Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 26 Nov 1996 14:42:07 +0200 (SAT)
From:      Robert Nordier <rnordier@iafrica.com>
To:        bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Cc:        jkh@time.cdrom.com, rnordier@iafrica.com, grog@lemis.de, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: A simple way to crash your system.
Message-ID:  <199611261242.OAA02954@eac.iafrica.com>
In-Reply-To: <199611261205.XAA06641@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from Bruce Evans at "Nov 26, 96 11:05:10 pm"

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Bruce Evans wrote:

> >FWIW, the table below represents a couple of months of collecting
> >data from users on -questions, who reported that the msdosfs had
> >seriously corrupted a UFS partition.
> >
> >       DRIVE              DOS START        DOS END
> >       cyl  head sect ||  cyl  head sect   cyl  head sect      size
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------
> >wd0 |  525 | 64 |  63 ||    0 |  1 |  1 |  126 | 63 |  63 |  512001
> >wd0 | 2099 | 64 |  63 ||    0 |  1 |  1 |  189 | 63 |  63 |  766017
> >      same drive      ||  250 |  0 |  1 |  523 | 63 |  63 | 1104768
> >wd0 |  788 | 64 |  63 ||    0 |  1 |  1 |  787 | 63 |  63 | 3177153
> >wd0 |  621 | 64 |  63 ||    0 |  1 |  1 |  619 | 63 |  63 | 2499777
> >wd0 |  525 | 64 |  63 ||    0 |  1 |  1 |  523 | 63 |  63 | 2112705
> >
> >*All* problems occurred with the DOS FS on a 64/63 IDE drive.  FIPS
> >was not necessarily used.  In one case, the corrupted UFS fs was
> >actually on another drive.
> 
> That can't be the problem, since FreeBSD ignores the geometry in both
> the driver and in msdosfs.

OK: just a tempting assumption based on the available data, plus
the fact that I found the problem impossible to reproduce on several
large heads=16, sectors/track=63 IDE drives (even for 64-sector block
sizes: the maximum DOS supports).

> > >Unless someone is aware of the problem being more general, it may 

> > MAXBSIZE = 16384.  I'm not sure exactly what using larger blocks breaks, 
> if anything (blocks up to MAXPHYS=64K are sometimes used and work OK), 
> but ufs is careful to reject file systems with a larger block size.  

There was one (though unconfirmed) reported case of corruption
involving a DOS FS with a 32-sector block size, so I suggested 8192.
Either way, it might be a good thing for the current msdosfs to reject
larger block sizes as well by default, possibly overrideable by a 
mount_msdos option or a kernel config statement.

--
Robert Nordier



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199611261242.OAA02954>