[syslinux] Syslinux 4.06-pre12

Ady ady-sf at hotmail.com
Tue Oct 9 14:32:57 PDT 2012


Subject:        	Re: [syslinux] Syslinux 4.06-pre12
Date sent:      	Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:12:23 +0100

> On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 18:01 -0300, Paulo Alcantara wrote:
> > Hi Matt,
> > 
> > From: Matt Fleming <matt at console-pimps.org>
> > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:05:10 +0100
> > 
> > > As I understood it, the problem is that the NTFS code doesn't handle a
> > > fragmented MFT. Paulo, do you think this is important enough to fix
> > > before the final 4.06 release? Or is the use case special enough that we
> > > can fix it later?
> > 
> > Well, ideally we should fix it before the final 4.06 release - however I hadn't
> > any time to take a look at it yet. AFAIK it's not a common case to get the MFT
> > fragmented (correct me if I'm wrong), so I guess we could just fix it after the
> > final release.
> 
> I'm afraid I know nothing about NTFS or its uses. I've Cc'd Peter in
> case he has an opinion.
> 
> > Besides, depending on how much it will take to get the final release and if I
> > get some free time, I may fix it before.
> 
> I was aiming to get the final release out by the end of this week.
> 
> One thing that's worth mentioning is that now I have access to the
> release infrastructure the time between releases should be much shorter.
> So, if we do have to punt on this fix for 4.06 I'm sure it will make it
> into another release fairly quickly.
> 
> Really the question is whether anyone is available to make the changes
> needed to support a fragmented MFT and how much work that would be.
> 
> -- 
> Matt Fleming, Intel Open Source Technology Center
> 
> 

I don't know if the problem really is a fragmented MFT, but in case 
it is...

If a user just formats a partition to NTFS and installs ldlinux.sys, 
then the probability of a fragmented MFT that would affect it is low.

But if the fs is already there, and it has been in use for some time 
(with some periods of relatively small free space), then a fragmented 
MFT is very much possible. It is possible that this is the situation 
found by the user in that report, when ldlinux.sys was installed.



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