Tekk, The compatibility between linux ext and unix ufs (aka ffs in 4.4BSDs) is terrible. Both the linux kernel developers think ufs is a quagmire and the BSD kernel folks don't use extX so they don't really know if it works. Google Unix File System and hit the wikipedia article which explains how this mess was evolved into being.
I have a perverted solution, use fat32. It's failures are very well understood. Evan Root, CCNA On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 8:01 AM, Donald Allen <donaldcal...@gmail.com>wrote: > On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Shawn K. Quinn <skqu...@rushpost.com> > wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 16, 2013, at 05:26 PM, Donald Allen wrote: > >> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 5:48 PM, Tekk <t...@parlementum.net> wrote: > >> > I've got an ext3 /home partition which I use under linux, how likely > is > >> > it that files will get clobbered if I use the same /home under a dual > >> > boot with openbsd? > >> > > >> > >> Your subject asks about the stability of the ext2 support in OpenBSD, > >> but your message says you have an ext3 partition you want to access. > >> ext2 and ext3 are not the same thing -- ext3 is a journaled variant of > >> ext2 that OpenBSD does not support. See > >> > >> http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq9.html > >> > >> Don't do it. > > > > My understanding is read/write access is considerably more risky than > > read-only access. If you just need to read that /home under OpenBSD it's > > much less complicated and less risky as you can just mount /home > > read-only and be done with it (even if it's still ext3). > > > > At minimum, if you insist on read-write, you should get rid of the > > journal thus converting ext3 back to ext2. It's a Really Bad Idea to > > mount ext3 as ext2 read-write unless you are extra careful to shut down > > cleanly every time and even then it's dubious. > > > > It *might* be less risky if you format that /home as FFS and access it > > using the Linux kernel's UFS/FFS module. Or, you could simply keep > > separate /home for GNU/Linux and OpenBSD, which to me is perhaps the > > cleanest solution. (I tend to compile a lot of stuff and install it to > > $HOME/bin when I don't want it cluttering up /usr/local/bin which is > > something I will admit a lot of users probably don't do.) > > ext2 is a side line for OpenBSD, not used as much and therefore not as > well-tested as the ffs code. The same is true for Linux, exchanging > ext2 and ffs. I'd be very disinclined to trust a file-system I cared > about to code that hasn't been heavily beaten upon. I learned this the > hard way when I encountered a bug in FreeBSD's ext2 support that > killed the system and damaged the file-system. This was some years > ago, but as I recall, I had to resort to using Linux's fsck to put > things back together. > > The original post implies that he wants write access to the > file-system from both OpenBSD and Linux, so mounting read-only > probably doesn't serve his purpose. It he converts his ext3 > file-system to ext2, then he can mount read-write with OpenBSD, > assuming the OpenBSD ext2 code supports 256-byte inodes, and run the > risk of discovering a bug in the OpenBSD ext2 code. And he loses the > protection of the journal when running Linux. > > I think your suggestion of separate /home file-systems makes the most > sense. > > > > > -- > > Shawn K. Quinn > > skqu...@rushpost.com
