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On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 5:24 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@×××.de> wrote: |
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> On Sun, Apr 08, 2012 at 01:21:05PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: |
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> |
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>> Note, however, that you *need* GRUB2 if your kernel lives in an ext4 |
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>> partition that it's not longer compatible with ext3. Don't do the |
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>> change without migrating to GRUB2 before. |
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> |
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> Hm... I wonder what I’m missing in my setup. I still run grub-0.97 (I like it |
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> more because it loads faster than Grub 2 ^^). Anyhoo, I have /boot on my root |
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> partition, and a longer while ago I made the switch from ext3 to ext4 through |
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> backup, reformat and restore. According to dumpe2fs, I have the following |
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> features enabled on the partition in question: |
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> |
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> has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent |
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> flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize |
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> |
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> My fstab entry is minimalist: |
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> /dev/sda3 / ext4 auto 0 1 |
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> |
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> So how did I manage to get the system booted with grub 0.97 in the first |
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> place? I’m not using an “init thingy” BTW. ;-) |
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|
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As I said in my last email: |
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|
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OK, I went out and did my homework. GRUB legacy upstream doesn't |
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support ext4 partitions (using extents, of course; without extents, |
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they can be mounted as ext3), but Gentoo (as almost any other |
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distribution under the sun) applies a patch to support it. Actually, |
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it applies 37 patches, contained in grub-0.97-patches-1.12.tar.bz2, |
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one of them called 850_all_grub-0.97_ext4.patch, which says: |
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|
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Gentoo bug #250829 - Include support for booting from ext4 partitions. |
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|
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This is the respun and tested patch adapted from |
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http://code.google.com/p/grub4ext4/ so that it will apply with the |
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rest of the Gentoo patches. |
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|
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Tested with: |
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/boot on ext2 |
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/boot on ext3 |
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/boot on ext4 |
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/ on ext4 (no seperate /boot) |
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|
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Patch ported by Diego E. Pettenò (flameeyes) |
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Testing by Robin H. Johnson (robbat2) |
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|
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Signed-off-by: Diego E. 'Flameeyes' Pettenò <flameeyes@g.o> |
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Signed-off-by: Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@g.o> |
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|
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So mistery solved: GRUB legacy in Gentoo supports ext4, but it differs |
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from upstream. When I was doing research for converting my filesystem |
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to ext4, everywhere I looked it said that GRUB legacy doesn't support |
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ext4... because it doesn't. Gentoo patches the sources, but upstream |
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GRUB legacy does not support ext4. |
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|
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So I can finally stop telling people to migrate to GRUB2 if they want |
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to use ext4. |
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|
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Regards. |
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-- |
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Canek Peláez Valdés |
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Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación |
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Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
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