Back when I was poking around with filesystem fuzzing stuff years back, I noticed something odd:
An EXT filesystem can tell the Linux OS how it should behave "if" the filesystem is corrupt, including triggering a kernel panic. In a world where USB thumb drives exist, this seems... not ideal.
Let's see what happens if we plug such a mass storage device into a fully patched Chromebook in 2024...
Oh.
The man page for tune2fs is pretty clear about this capability.
The person who writes the data to the USB mass storage device can specify that both:
1) The OS that reads the device should panic if the filesystem has an error.
2) The filesystem has an error.
🤦♂️
I remember testing that feature before I had a computer with USB. It also works with floppies.
There is a mount option which can override that behavior. If that mount option is specified the value specified on the file system itself has no effect.
It's a questionable feature. I think it would make sense to remove the ability to specify it on the file system. Having the mount option makes some kind of sense.
Mr. Bitterness
kasperd