Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Ryan Tandy <tarpman@×××××××××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Reformat/repartition USB flash drive to ext2/3?
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:17:54
Message-Id: 455FF644.2010007@tarpman.homelinux.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] Reformat/repartition USB flash drive to ext2/3? by Kevin O'Gorman
1 Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
2 > I am annoyed with using vfat on my USB flash drives because I cannot
3 > get proper permissions and ownership. Not for the security (meaningless
4 > on a drive that easy to steal, unless encrypted), but annoying anyway.
5 >
6 > Is there any technical reason I should not repartition it as something else
7 > -- ext3 or xfs, say -- and allow executables and such?
8 >
9 > ++ kevin
10 >
11
12 Most people format their flash drives as vfat for interoperability,
13 since all the major operating systems can read from and write to vfat
14 filesystems. If you know you'll only be plugging it into Linux systems,
15 then go right ahead. As far as ownership goes, remember that [ug]ids
16 are stored numerically on the device, so a file that's owned by your
17 user on your system may well be owned by (random example) apache on
18 someone else's.
19
20 I seem to remember reading somewhere that one shouldn't use a
21 journalling file system on flash-based devices such as USB drives (i.e.
22 you should use ext2 rather than ext3), but I can't find the reference
23 right now. Can anyone clarify this for me?
24 --
25 gentoo-user@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Reformat/repartition USB flash drive to ext2/3? Richard Fish <bigfish@××××××××××.org>