The following is a list of files and features that are going to be removed in the mtd-utils source tree. Every entry should contain what exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing the work. When the feature is removed from the utils, it should also be removed from this file. --------------------------- 1. Kill --squash-rino-perm and --nosquash-rino-perm parameters of mkfs.ubifs. Originally, mkfs.ubifs did not have these parameters, and it always set permissions for the UBIFS root inode to be {uid=gid=root, u+rwx,go+rx}. This was a bug which was found too late, when mkfs.ubifs had already been used in production. To fix this bug, 2 new options were introduced: --squash-rino-perm which preserves the old behavior and --nosquash-rino-perm which makes mkfs.ubifs use the right permissions for the root inode. For a while (releases 1.4.0-1.4.3) --squash-rino-perm was the default, and if neither --squash-rino-perm nor --nosquash-rino-perm were used, mkfs.ubifs printed a warning. This was introduced in mtd-utils-1.4.0 (13 Sep 2010). Now we have removed a warning and made --nosquash-rino-perm to be the default. Also, both options are declared deprecated, so users should try to stop using them. The further step is to remove both of them. --------------------------- 2. Kill -m parameter of mtdinfo We cannot assume that mtd device names follow the "/dev/mtd%d" pattern, because it is up to udev rules to name the devices. So we are removing the -m option. For now, we just have a warning, but the option will be removed in release 1.4.6. --------------------------- 3. flash_info utility This is duplicating behavior with the mtdinfo utility. Now the util warns when people use it, but it'll be removed in release 1.4.6. --------------------------- 4. Rename --noskipbad option, kill --omitbad, change default BB method for nanddump Our bad block handling methods are getting disorganized. They will be replaced by a series of --bb=METHOD options (see `nanddump --help'). In addition, the previous default bad block behavior was to dump 0xFF in place of bad blocks. This was not a good "inverse operation" of nandwrite. Thus, the current default behavior has become the (new) option --bb=padbad, and in 1.4.6, the default will be --bb=skipbad. The new `--bb=METHOD' options are included in this release, but all feature removals and changed defaults will occur in 1.4.6. For now, there are appropriate deprecation warning messages and an alert telling about the soon-to-be-default settings. Transition summary table: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Old option New option Comment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --bb=padbad dump flash data, substituting 0xFF for any bad blocks --noskipbad --bb=dumpbad dump flash data, including any bad blocks --skipbad --bb=skipbad, dump good data, completely skipping any bad blocks (new default) --omitbad N/A very similar to `skipbad', will be removed soon --------------------------- 5. nanddump will not dump OOB by default In 1.4.6, nanddump will not dump OOB by default. To dump OOB, you will have to explicitly use the option `--oob'. For now, there is simply a warning every time you use nanddump without explicitly choosing `--oob' or `--omitoob'. Note that `-o' will no longer stand for `--omitoob'. To unify with nandwrite, it will stand for `--oob' (Dump OOB data). ---------------------------