Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Wed, 21 Aug 1996 21:41:43 +0100 (BST) | From | Bryn Paul Arnold Jones <> | Subject | Re: Linux-Sparc ext2 compatibility? |
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On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
[...] > As a result, e2fsprogs on a Sparc will fail most of the e2fsck > regression tests, since the filesystem formats are incompatible. > > This is bad --- very bad. It means that you can't take a ext2 floppy > and use it as an interchange mechanism between a Sparc Linux box and a > i386 Linux box. It means you can't just say, "This external 1GB scsi > disk has an ext2 filesystem on it". You have to qualify it with whether > it is a Sparc ext2 filesystem or a i386 ext2 filesystem. [...] > > The question now is --- how do we fix this? Are there enough Sparc > Linux boxes out there that it's too late to do a flag day? Do we need > to put a lot of complexity into the kernel code and the e2fsprogs > utilities so that we can recognize different versions of the bitmasks > and do the appropriate byte swapping on the bitmasks? (This can be > done, but at some performance cost). > > Or, we could decide that we don't care, and just simply leave things in > an incompatible state. That would be a real shame though, I think. > > - Ted >
IMHO, fix it ASAP, and write a utiltiy to convert from one to the other. ie build and install the next kernel that's not going to like things, boot with a root disk, convert the fs, boot the new kernel and your done ;)
Bryn -- PGP key pass phrase forgotten, \ Overload -- core meltdown sequence again :( and I don't care ;) | initiated. / This space is intentionally left | blank, apart from this text ;-) \____________________________________
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