Ben Hutchings composed on 2024-11-10 01:50 (UTC+0100):
> The ext2 filesystem uses 32-bit timestamps and will be unable to
> represent timestamps beyond early 2038. It is now deprecated in Linux
> for this reason.
> As we're generally moving to 64-bit time times in the trixie release, I
> think it's time to address this in partman, so far as possible.
> Currently many of the partman recipes specify ext2 for the /boot
> partition. In some cases I expect that this is necessary due to
> limitations of older boot loaders. For mainstream architectures using
> GRUB to boot, ext4 can be used for the /boot partition.
> Should I start proposing specific changes or does someone else have
> time to work on this?
Last week I was under a misunderstanding that upgrading EXT2 filesystems to EXT4
would be a satisfactory solution to eventual 64 bit timestamp support necessity,
when it turns out some EXT4 filesystems suffer the same condition. EXT4
supported,
and supports, inode size 128, as does EXT2. I had quite a number of EXT2, as
well
as having EXT4 configured with 128. Only after I managed to get most of my EXT2s
converted to EXT4 did I discover the 128 byte inodes on those converted from
EXT2
to EXT4 do not support timestamps after January 2038. Furthermore, EXT4
filesystems with feature flex_bg cannot be converted to 256 byte inode size by
simply using e2fsck and tune2fs. So, all those already converted EXT2s need
another conversion, /and/ many more than not of my (much large quantity of)
EXT4s
need complete reformats. :(
Simply switching to EXT4 for /boot/ won't go far enough. Small sizes of those
EXT4s suited to /boot/ use by default feature 128 byte inodes. Formatting those
may require explicit use of '-I 256', and/or a change to mke2fs.conf to prevent
small EXT4s from misfeaturing 128 byte inodes.
--
Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
based on faith, not based on science.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
Felix Miata
