Linux 6.9 Deprecates The EXT2 File-System Driver

[Old Grouch]

Only true for EFI system. Boot can contain symlinks.

Note: EFI System Partitions are not FAT32 formatted.

A close reading of the UEFI specifications will show the differences between the format of an ESP and FAT32. The differences might be regarded as small, but they do exist.

[S.Pam]

Note: EFI System Partitions are not FAT32 formatted.

A close reading of the UEFI specifications will show the differences between the format of an ESP and FAT32. The differences might be regarded as small, but they do exist.

Care to provide a link to such differences?

[TiCPU]

Note: EFI System Partitions are not FAT32 formatted.

A close reading of the UEFI specifications will show the differences between the format of an ESP and FAT32. The differences might be regarded as small, but they do exist.

https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/13_Protocols_Media_Access.html#file-system-format-1

> EFI encompasses the use of FAT32 for a system partition, [...] The EFI firmware must support the FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12 variants of the EFI file system.

Please share references to back up your claims next time.

[emblemparade]

Sigh. Phoronix did not explain the situation properly and people are getting confused. Ext is backwards compatible, so the ext4 driver can handle ext3 and ext2 partitions just fine. You can even format ext2 partitions with it. The only change here is removing the ext2-only driver. Nobody is losing any functionality.

The use case for an ext2-only driver is distributions that do not use ext3 or ext4 and would rather keep things very minimal. I doubt it would hurt them much to use the ext4 driver instead.

[energyman]

this is long overdue. The ext4 driver could interact with ext2 partitions fine for ages.

[erniv2]

To my knowledge EXT2 is mostly identical to EXT3 without journal (or EXT3 is EXT2 with added journal). EXT4 adds some more no longer backwards compatible features, but is fundamentally still the same file system architecture. Any driver that can mount EXT3 file systems should be able to mount EXT2 file systems. As long as none of the new features of EXT4 or the journal are enabled (should not happen automatically), an EXT2 file system mounted with the EXT4 or EXT3 driver should stay an EXT2 file system compatible with the old EXT2 driver.
If the dedicated EXT2 file system driver is not present, the kernel will likely just transparently use the EXT4 driver instead without any user space change required.

This !

Ext4 is capable of mounting ext2, ext3, ext4, you only need one driver for all 3, so the ext2 module can be removed no questions asked.

[mrg666]

Ext4 driver can work with both ext2 and ext3 partitions with or without journaling. It will just decrease the source code by several hundred lines, which is not compiled by most distros. This is just dead code removal, happy to see that.

[Anux]

Sigh. Phoronix did not explain the situation properly and people are getting confused.

No you must have read it too hasty:

The EXT4 driver is able to handle EXT2 file-systems ...

[ferry]

Not to be pedant.

/boot : xfs or ext4
/boot/efi : vfat

You don't need to have your whole /boot in the crappy FAT format.

Edit : oopsie, jabl was there first ! :thumbup:

I have /boot as a btrfs sub volume boot

[archsway]

ChromeOS still uses ext2 for the immutable root filesystem, but it already uses the ext4 subsystem for that.