Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | Re: Linux-Sparc ext2 compatibility? | From | Jes Degn Soerensen <> | Date | 23 Aug 1996 11:58:51 +0200 |
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>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Dyas <tdyas@eden.rutgers.edu> writes:
>> 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).
Tom> We should have a flag day. There aren't that many Linux/SPARC Tom> machines right now as compared to the Intel port and the people Tom> running existing systems understand that the SPARC port is just Tom> coming out of the "hackers" stage. These people would understand Tom> if a major change had to be instituted. There was a previous Tom> problem with ext2 symlinks that called for a flag day.
As David explained this is not really a Sparc problem, but rather a m68k problem. The problem is just the fact that the m68k port is not just coming out of the 'hacker' stage, I for once started playing with Linux on my Amiga more than 3 years ago and was not even there when the whole m68k thing started. Besides we still have some users who refuse to upgrade their kernels from the old 0.9.x ones, because the filesystem was for the m68k changed somewhere in the 1.2.13 days.
Tom> If we worried about backward compatibility when something is Tom> obviously broken, then Linux would have not gotten to where it is Tom> today (all ports).
Why is it obviously broken? UFS supports both big-endian and little-endian filesystems, this is an option for the ext2 filesystem as well.
Jes
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