Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: boot Gentoo from USB key

[Raffaele BELARDI <raffaele.belardi@st.com>]

On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 10:38 +0200, Raffaele Belardi wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-05-02 at 11:33 -0400, Drake Donahue wrote:
> > >
> > > If I'm correct you're running into the ext3 large inode issue.  Briefly,
> > > old versions used 128 byte inodes, while newer versions use 256 byte
> > > inodes by default, in ordered to be ready for the improvements coming in
> > > ext4.  The problem is that legacy grub doesn't support the larger inodes,
> > > and isn't being developed any longer so that isn't going to change, while
> > > new grub isn't even scheduled for format compatibility stability until
> > > late this year!
> > >
> 
> > An interesting find. Were the inodes for ext2 also defaulted to 256 or only 
> > those for ext3? This question relevant as Raffaele only talked about using 
> > ext2 and vfat partitions on the pen drive. In a quick search I found no 
> > indications. If ext2 inode structure was also changed much more should be 
> > heard about this.
> > 
> 
> I confirm that by default mkfs.ext2 created 256 byte inodes so I'm
> positive about Duncan's suggestion. I'll try to re-create the partition
> forcing inode size to 128. I'm using stable amd64 system, updated a
> couple of weeks ago.

I confirm that passing -I 128 to mkfs.ext2 fixes the problem, now grub
finds the stage files and installs happily on the ext2 partition.

thanks again,

raf

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