Re: grub backport and ext4 support?

[Nicolas KOWALSKI <niko@petole.demisel.net>]

Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> writes:

> Am Sonntag, den 07.02.2010, 19:08 +0100 schrieb Nicolas KOWALSKI:
>>
>> Would it be safe to also convert my ext3 root partition (no /boot
>> here) to ext4 if I upgrade my grub installation to the one provided by
>> the backports?
>
> I am doing this on one laptop and it works perfectly. I guess you need
> to add rootfstype=ext4 to the kernel command-line to make it boot
> correctly.

I added the option as you wrote, to /etc/default/grub,
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rootfstype=ext4". update-grub did the rest, but I
forgot something, see below.


Simon Iremonger <wiltslug@iremonger.me.uk> writes:

> For reference, you may want to note 'converted' ext3 is not quite
>   the same as ext4, i think the flex_bg type different layout
>   does not get installed? something like that.

Yes, I know I will not have the full features of ext4, but my system
already behaves faster, so this is fine.

> BUT -- be wary -- just installing grub package or even running
>   "update-grub" does not actually seem to reinstall those boot
>   sectors (MBR and following sectors...).
> It seems to involve:-
>   * The package getting updated
>   * the stage1.5 stage2 etc. files in /boot getting updated
>   * the actual boot sectors getting reinstalled
> I think you have to run grub-setup or something....

Well, when I first booted the system (I did not reveived your reply
and that time), things went wrong because, as you wrote, the upgrade
to grub2 did not involve reinstalling the boot sectors. Fortunately I
could still boot manually, so I ran grub-install, and now the system
boots well.


Thanks to both for your usefull replies; now I have:

niko@petole:~$ mount -t ext4
/dev/hda1 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime)
/dev/hda3 on /home type ext4 (rw,noatime)

:-)

-- 
Nicolas