Another Installer bug. xfs also not work...

Another Installer bug. xfs also not work...

[Arne Fitzenreiter]

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At my tests about the grub install bug i found another that is there
since core173.

The install on xfs filesystem fails because xfsprogs refuse to create
filesystems smaller than 300MB.

https://bugzilla.ipfire.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13077

there are three possible solutions:
1. add "-unsupported" flag to ignore this limit (not sure if this a good 
idea
    because we had strange out of space reports in the past also if no 
additional filles
    are installed.)

2. enlarge boot partition

3. switch boot partition to ext4

Which is the best solution?

Arne

Re: Another Installer bug. xfs also not work...

[Stefan Schantl]

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Hello Arne,

thanks for having a look on this and figuring out this limitation.
> At my tests about the grub install bug i found another that is there
> since core173.
> 
> The install on xfs filesystem fails because xfsprogs refuse to create
> filesystems smaller than 300MB.
> 
> https://bugzilla.ipfire.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13077
> 
> there are three possible solutions:
> 1. add "-unsupported" flag to ignore this limit (not sure if this a
> good 
> idea
>     because we had strange out of space reports in the past also if
> no 
> additional filles
>     are installed.)

The will have their reasons, why the developers choosed 300 MB as
minimum file system size. Even there is this flag to bypass that, may
there as you already mentioned unexpected side effects.

> 
> 2. enlarge boot partition

This would be a good idea, because the kernel size grows up from
release to release and if there are strange out of space problems in
the past would solve them too. Enlarge to for example 512MB would solve
both issues at once.

Are there any problems to expect for small installations on very
limited storage space (SD-cards etc.) ?

> 
> 3. switch boot partition to ext4

This would bypass the XFS limitation but would result in a kind of
very fragmented filesystem types. EFI would be vfat, boot ext4 and if
selected the main file systemd XFS.

I would no expect any troubles when doing this but for me it tastes a
bit dizzy and unclean.

> 
> Which is the best solution?

In theory there would be a fourth option:

4. Drop the option to select XFS during setup and force the usage of
ext4....

> 
> Arne

Best regards,

-Stefan

Re: Another Installer bug. xfs also not work...

[Michael Tremer]

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Hello,

I would say we simply increase the size of the partition to 512 MiB. It feels a little bit wasteful, but there is not much else we can do if we want to continue supporting XFS.

I do not think there is any benefit in mixing partition types, because with XFS selected and VFAT being used for EFI and ext4 being used for /boot you would have a whole zoo of file systems not offering any advantage.

I have no idea what the state is out there that we can finally drop the /boot partition and systems with hard drives of several terabyte size would still be able to boot. So for that reason, I would like to keep things as they are and just enlarge the partition.

Best,
-Michael

> On 5 Apr 2023, at 10:16, Stefan Schantl <stefan.schantl(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello Arne,
> 
> thanks for having a look on this and figuring out this limitation.
>> At my tests about the grub install bug i found another that is there
>> since core173.
>> 
>> The install on xfs filesystem fails because xfsprogs refuse to create
>> filesystems smaller than 300MB.
>> 
>> https://bugzilla.ipfire.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13077
>> 
>> there are three possible solutions:
>> 1. add "-unsupported" flag to ignore this limit (not sure if this a
>> good 
>> idea
>>     because we had strange out of space reports in the past also if
>> no 
>> additional filles
>>     are installed.)
> 
> The will have their reasons, why the developers choosed 300 MB as
> minimum file system size. Even there is this flag to bypass that, may
> there as you already mentioned unexpected side effects.
> 
>> 
>> 2. enlarge boot partition
> 
> This would be a good idea, because the kernel size grows up from
> release to release and if there are strange out of space problems in
> the past would solve them too. Enlarge to for example 512MB would solve
> both issues at once.
> 
> Are there any problems to expect for small installations on very
> limited storage space (SD-cards etc.) ?
> 
>> 
>> 3. switch boot partition to ext4
> 
> This would bypass the XFS limitation but would result in a kind of
> very fragmented filesystem types. EFI would be vfat, boot ext4 and if
> selected the main file systemd XFS.
> 
> I would no expect any troubles when doing this but for me it tastes a
> bit dizzy and unclean.
> 
>> 
>> Which is the best solution?
> 
> In theory there would be a fourth option:
> 
> 4. Drop the option to select XFS during setup and force the usage of
> ext4....
> 
>> 
>> Arne
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -Stefan