Re: [gentoo-user] Extended file attributes: ext4

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 11:44 AM,  <meino.cramer@×××.de> wrote:
>>>> Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> [12-04-08 18:40]:

[snip]

>>>> Status quo: System with ext4 and no extended attributes.
>>>> Where I want to be: The same system with extended attributes.
>>>>
>>>> Way to go: No reformatting and mkfs and all that things. Only kernel
>>>> reconfiguring / recompiling / rebooting and emerging some tools.
>>>>
>>>> Possible?
>>>
>>> As others had said, this is possible. I used this guide:
>>>
>>> http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/643
>>>
>>> You need basically to enable the ext4-only features:
>>>
>>> tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index <partition>
>>
>> Um, why? Ext3 had extended attribute support, and ISTR the ext4 code
>> being able to handle ext3 filesystems.
>
> Didn't we already had this discussion? You can mount an ext3 partition
> as ext4, and it will be treated as ext4, but it will keep bein fully
> backwards compatible with ext3 (i.e., you can still mount it as ext3).
> This, however, negates the purpose of using ext4, as you are not using
> extents:

Sure, ext4 is a better filesystem than ext3. I'm not disputing that.
I'm disputing that. I'm disputing two things:

1) That you need to convert a filesystem to ext4 in order to use
extended attributes.
2) That you need to convert the filesystem at all; Meino's 'status
quo' filesystem is already ext4, per the portion of his email I
quoted.

-- 
:wq