On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>>>> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 11:44 AM, <meino.cra...@gmx.de> wrote: >>>>>> Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> [12-04-08 18:40]: >> >> [snip] >> >>>>>> Status quo: System with ext4 and no extended attributes. >>>>>> Where I want to be: The same system with extended attributes. >>>>>> >>>>>> Way to go: No reformatting and mkfs and all that things. Only kernel >>>>>> reconfiguring / recompiling / rebooting and emerging some tools. >>>>>> >>>>>> Possible? >>>>> >>>>> As others had said, this is possible. I used this guide: >>>>> >>>>> http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/643 >>>>> >>>>> You need basically to enable the ext4-only features: >>>>> >>>>> tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index <partition> >>>> >>>> Um, why? Ext3 had extended attribute support, and ISTR the ext4 code >>>> being able to handle ext3 filesystems. >>> >>> Didn't we already had this discussion? You can mount an ext3 partition >>> as ext4, and it will be treated as ext4, but it will keep bein fully >>> backwards compatible with ext3 (i.e., you can still mount it as ext3). >>> This, however, negates the purpose of using ext4, as you are not using >>> extents: >> >> Sure, ext4 is a better filesystem than ext3. I'm not disputing that. >> I'm disputing that. I'm disputing two things: >> >> 1) That you need to convert a filesystem to ext4 in order to use >> extended attributes. >> 2) That you need to convert the filesystem at all; Meino's 'status >> quo' filesystem is already ext4, per the portion of his email I >> quoted. > > From Mick's mail: > >> Status quo: System with ext4 and no extended attributes. >> Where I want to be: The same system with extended attributes. > > I assume with that he meant the "extents" option. Therefore, all the > things I already said.
Ah. 'extents' and 'extended attributes' are completely different things. I did a bit of googling to confirm my recollection. FWIW, I came across this very excellent page in discussion of Ext4 compared to other and previous filesystems: http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4 -- :wq
