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Amanda S

Member

Registered: 2013-09-21

Posts: 276

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Cannot use ext4 on newer ISO's

(I've researched this problem but I couldn't find anything, specially since it began in Aug this year and doesn't happen on other distros).

Using the July-and-older ISO's is fine, I can create and format my volumes (one of them is + 860GB) just fine.
However, if using the ISO from Aug or later I cannot do so. Here's what happens:

After creating my logical volumes, I format them.

lvcreate -L 100%FREE system -n home

This is the last volume I create, the biggest one.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/system-home

This is how I format it with ext4.

However, on these newer ISO's, this step takes a really long time, minutes, specially in the "Writting Inode Tables", "Writting Superblocks", and "Creating journal blocks" parts. On July-and-older ISO's (or if using btrfs instead of ext4) it takes seconds, mkfs.btrfs is instant.

I don't know if this is a new "thing" in mkfs or if the ISO is somehow doing something wrong, so that's why I'm creating this thread. I've verified the SHA1SUM and the DVD is fine (I'm paranoid about these things).

The issue above is not really the big monster in the room. I wouldn't mind waiting for it to happen. What really bothers me is that after installation the system won't boot, syslinux can't find "something.32". I know, I'm sorry for not posting the real message, but I got really pissed off and now I'm using btrfs, which I'm planning to switch to from ext4 if this issue is non-fixable (at some point, using the July ISO will create a corrupt system).

My HD: WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1

It works fine with the July ISO, with btrfs (which seems to have a faster IO), and NTFS. The problem is not on the drive.

Cheers.

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If it ain't broke, you haven't tweaked it enough...

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,889

Re: Cannot use ext4 on newer ISO's

$ pacman -Fo /usr/bin/mkfs.ext4
usr/bin/mkfs.ext4 is owned by core/e2fsprogs 1.43.3-1
$

e2fsprog was upgraded from 1.42.13-1 to 1.43.1-1 on june 28, and entered [core] around july 7 .
I do remember some default options in /etc/mke2s.conf were changed.
Maybe those new options don't work well with lvm ?

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky