Re: Incorrect Overlayfs documentation

[Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 6:51 AM nerdopolis
<bluescreen_avenger@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> On Thursday, July 16, 2020 1:03:52 PM EDT Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 6:09 AM nerdopolis
> > <bluescreen_avenger@verizon.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi
> > >
> > > A while back I opened up https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195113 describing a documentation problem in
> > > https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.txt but for whatever reason, it hasn't been seen.
> > >
> > >
> > > The problem is that it says "The lower filesystem can be any filesystem supported by Linux"
> > > however, this is not the case, as Linux supports vfat, and vfat doesn't work as a lower filesystem
> > >
> > > So there's no way to tell what filesystems are applicable for an overlay lowerfs,
> > > and I don't think any existing userspace utilities can detect it.
> > >
> > > Could it be possible for the .txt file to be updated?
> > >
> >
> > The way it works usually in this project is you can submit a patch to fix the
> > problem:
> > https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.17/process/submitting-patches.html
> >
> > But if you don't want to go through that process, you can offer a text to
> > fix documentation.
> >
> > But I myself cannot offer anything better than:
> > "The lower filesystem can be one of many filesystem supported by Linux".
> >
> > I don't think that we want to start listing the supported filesystems in
> > documentation.
> >
> > FWIW the description of upper fs isn't uptodate either.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Amir.
> >
> >
> Hi.
>
> Yeah, that process might be cumbersome. I guess what you have is good.
> Maybe "A wide range of filesystems supported by Linux can be the lower
> filesystem, however, not all filesystems that are mountable by Linux have the
> features needed for OverlayFS to work"
> ?
>

That sounds good to me.

CC the maintainer in case he wants to apply this documentation "patch"
himself.

Thanks,
Amir.