From: don311@gmx.us
To: linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org
Subject: jffs2, mtd, mtd-utils and ancient kernels
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 20:01:03 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1N9dsV-1hx2G70tCn-015aTM@mail.gmx.com> (raw)
Greetings,
I apologize for writing my first post here on a topic you've made
abundantly clear, for a long _long_ time now, that you have no interest
in: support for ancient kernels. If it helps, let me be clear that I'm
not looking for "support" in quite the usual sense, but I have what I
think are a couple pretty basic questions. I've tried downloading and
searching through the mailing list archives going back to the era that
the device I'm working on was originally developed (2004) without much
luck. Google hasn't been much help with this either. Of course it's
possible I just wasn't searching for the right things.
Basic questions:
Q1/ From what I've read, before MTD, JFFS2, and mtd-utils source code
moved to Git in 2006, it was in CVS, and snapshots were available
here:
ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/people/dwmw2/mtd/...
That doesn't seem to work any more (hardly surprising, I guess,
after so long), but I'm wondering: Might those old snapshot archives
still be available somewhere else? I don't see any mention of it on
the current web site.
Q2/ Is there anything you can point me to that shows which versions of
MTD, JFFS2, and mtd-utils were delivered for use with each Linux
kernel release? In my case, I have particular interest in kernel
2.4.26 -- so would it be possible to, say, find the mtd-utils
version that corresponds to the version of MTD and JFFS2 used in
2.4.26?
Slightly more detailed historical questions -- if any of you are still
reading, and happen to remember back that far:
Q3/ The JFFS2 code in 2.4 is referred to in several places (web site and
mailing list) as stable, but does anyone here know/remember whether
its "on-disc" (er, "on-flash") format continued to stay stable after
2.4? Put another way, how compatible (forwards and backwards) are
JFFS2 images between 2.4 and later?
- On the forward side, if one upgraded the kernel on a device that
had been running 2.4.x (x >= 26) to something later, could the
file system be used as-is? (I mean, without risk of an ensuing
mess?)
- On the backward side, how dangerous would it be to use a 2.4.26
kernel with a new (never mounted) JFFS2 image built with a later
version of mkfs.jffs2? (Not that one would deliberately choose
such to do a thing, of course.) I've built 2 or 3 different
versions and found that they generate much different images from
a constant "source" directory tree, but I haven't yet tried to
dissect the images to understand the differences.
Q4/ The JFFS2 code in 2.4 is also referred to as well tested. Is anyone
here aware of whether that extends to the area of random hardware
resets / power cuts, such as might be experienced on embedded
devices without reliable power sources? I see there were many
performance improvements and bug fixes over the years, but are you
aware of any data about relative reliability -- on the same hardware
-- of JFFS2 in 2.4 vs much later / current, say? (I believe "on the
same hardware" would imply nor flash here, since 2.4 didn't support
nand.)
I'd be happy to explain what sorts of colorful pharmaceuticals I've been
into that could cause me to ask such questions, but I suspect the above
may be enough flame-inducing stuff for one post.
Best regards,
Don
______________________________________________________
Linux MTD discussion mailing list
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-mtd/
next reply other threads:[~2019-10-15 1:01 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-10-15 1:01 don311 [this message]
2019-10-15 19:11 ` jffs2, mtd, mtd-utils and ancient kernels Richard Weinberger
2019-10-16 20:27 ` don311
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=1N9dsV-1hx2G70tCn-015aTM@mail.gmx.com \
--to=don311@gmx.us \
--cc=linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).