[Sugar-devel] Unbootable machine

[Jonas Smedegaard]

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On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 02:19:54PM -0400, Luke Faraone wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 13:57, Sascha Silbe <
>sascha-ml-ui-sugar-devel at silbe.org> wrote:
>
>>  Part of me also wonders if using EXTLINUX might not be easier for you,
>>> too.
>>>
>> Part of our problem is that we don't know what quirks actually exist in
>> real hardware, so we're trying to come up with something that hopefully is
>> as compatible as possible. Using FAT is part of that.
>> If we'd know for sure using ext2 would work equally there's no reason not
>> to use it. BTW: How does Windows handle USB sticks with "unknown"
>> formatting?
>
>
>Windows cannot handle USB devices that have more than one partition, as far
>as I am aware. Windows treats unknown partitions as unformatted, and, if it
>displayed the disk at all, would prompt the user to format the device.
>
>ext(2, 3) is supported in Windows via a free (as in beer) kernel driver.
>
>If ext3 were to cause problems, we could loopmount a ext3 partition on a fat
>filesystem, but there would be no reason that it would have negative
>effects.

ext3 is on-disk compatible with ext2, so I would expect an ext2 driver 
to properly mount an ext3 partition as ext2 (which is perfectly fine, it 
will just not use journaling for that mount session).

The runtime more optimal ext4 (with journaling disabled, so that it runs 
faster than ext2 or ext3 but does not wear out the usb stick too fast) 
on the other hand is *not* on-disk compatible and will require a driver 
that explicitly handles ext4 (including that non-journal feature which 
was added in 2.6.29 ar thereabout).


  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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