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tlmiller
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Joined: 01 May 2025
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Location: MD, USA
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 Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2025 11:56 am Post subject: |
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If I were part of the lug, I would vote for just sticking with pacman as the manager. Why reinvent the wheel if there's already something that does everything you need?
But then, I'm lazy like that.
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2025 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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Nice references in your link above, even though several of them are quite dated. They still provide plenty of useful background and information.
Looking forward to giving your system a try when it becomes available! |
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ghostdawg
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Joined: 27 Dec 2025
Posts: 130
Location: MO
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2025 11:03 pm Post subject: Re: Could be done, but it'd take a fair amount of work |
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| masinick wrote: | | ghostdawg wrote: | | So, is anybody using it yet? If so, any comments about it? |
I have not tried it yet. I know that kernel support is imminent. After that, we will start to see rollouts of ext4 in use.
Should I get into a situation where I have a fair amount of extra testing time, I'd like to look into trying out this file system. Even test versions ought to be usable enough that they should not seriously corrupt systems, but I could be wrong. I would imagine that it would take a bit of doing to set up this file system if not integrated into the kernel already. Would involve recompiling a kernel with the ext4 support included - not a huge deal, but it would involve some searching for the right base code and the right extensions, then actually building the kernel to support ext4, then migrate from one file system to another, not exactly trivial work. |
Isn't it available for the newest kernel? If so, can it be used now? Just a thought on it.
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2025
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 12:05 am Post subject: 2.6.28 has the support if distros implement it |
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| There is some support in the 2.26.28 kernel. Whether it is complete support and whether each distro owner chooses to include it or not remains to be seen. You could probably get it going with Arch, Gentoo, and perhaps sidux with a bit of help, or you could build your own custom kernel from the latest sources, explicitly include ext4 support and it ought to work. |
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jester
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Joined: 19 Apr 2025
Posts: 1166
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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well I can say that ext4 has arrived
I converted the / of my gentoo-amd64 install to ext4 by doing the following:
1. updated to kernel 2.6.28 (I'm running stable not ~arch) and compiled with ext4 support
2. from within gentoo (doesn't need to be) edited /etc/fstab changing ext3 to ext4 for / (note don't do this for /boot!!!)
3. rebooted into my arch64 and ran the following (I have e2fsprogs-1.41.3-2 which includes the ext4 support):
| Code: | | tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/sb1 |
4. ran the fsck (absolutely required):
note: there'll be a lot of checksum errors - these are par for the conversion process
5. reboot
At present you can do any one of 3 things if you have the right kernel and tools:
1. build a new filesystem from scratch (e.g. a fresh install)
2. convert an existing ext3 partition (not /boot without grub2 and some additional tweaking and if /boot resides in /root I would go for option 1 only)
3. mount an existing ext3 as ext4 with -o noextents (i.e. it'll show up as ext4 but the file-structure is still ext3 and you have none of the ext4 stuff working <-- I could well be wrong there, but take it as a rough synopsis)
Before anyone thinks of doing what I've done, note that I've rebooted 2x, synced and emerged all of one (small package), browsed and played a couple of tunes - it may not boot up tomorrow 
Additionally, the steps above are in no way a tried and tested howto - follow at your own peril...no actually don't even do that, go read everything you can find related to ext4 for your distro/hardware, weigh that against the value of your working install and stored data
FWIW, gentoo with open.rc and ext4 boots up in no time 
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crouse
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Joined: 17 Apr 2025
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Location: Iowa
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jester
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2025
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks, Jester! While I am not quite ready to jump to ext4 just to know the file system, I do plan on keeping an eye on its maturity, and I do plan to be a moderately early adopter, at least on a test system, but I will probably not go for a widespread, mass conversion until it becomes the status quo.
Very interesting to see how it is coming along, though, and your posts are most informative, so thank you very much for them! |
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jada
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Joined: 13 May 2025
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Location: Sun City, CA 92585
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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| I have tested ext4 with Fedora before, and it is allready a part of Archlinux in testing. The new Grub uploaded today on the Archlinux servers "core stable" is ext4 ready. But how need ext4? Does some have t-drives? |
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tlmiller
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Joined: 01 May 2025
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Location: MD, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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| I'll move to EXT4 as soon as I can install it as EXT4 instead of converting.
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Debian Squeeze, Arch, Kubuntu mostly. Some Mandriva. Some Windows.
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jester
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Joined: 19 Apr 2025
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2025 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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| masinick wrote: | Thanks, Jester! While I am not quite ready to jump to ext4 just to know the file system, I do plan on keeping an eye on its maturity, and I do plan to be a moderately early adopter, at least on a test system, but I will probably not go for a widespread, mass conversion until it becomes the status quo.
Very interesting to see how it is coming along, though, and your posts are most informative, so thank you very much for them! |
I guess every forum needs a couple of crash-test-dummies Thanks for the props, but I think I've tested far sketchier code (2.5.x kernels, kernel patch-sets from respected to 'never-let-anyone-else-ever-know', reiserfs4, the list goes on ). The main point here is that it's in the mainstream kernel, it's no longer testing; however, the ext2/3 family have been such stalwarts for the majority of linux users/adopters (whether they knew it or not), the looming jump to ext4 potentially poses a huge shear in their computing reality.
@jada: yep, it's in arch testing, but I keep my arch as bog-standard as I can; I'm close to 7 years on gentoo, but only 2 on arch - as today's experiment showed, having that stable arch around actually allowed me to go into and execute the gentoo experiment.
Put the stability discussion aside, and yes, arch users are also getting the conversion trick working, but it is taking a few more steps than gentoo since several of the tools are still not mainstream. It is possible on arch (and all distros, if you can live with the required steps to get there - I read that ubuntu is quite the hoop-fest...), that is not in debate (note the highlighted text in the linked screenshot).
As to who needs ext4, well eventually most of us, but not because of terabyte and up storage - a read through the Ext4 wiki entry not only clarifies its origins as being extensions to address 64-bit computing concerns but covers reduced fragmentation through extents, better journal checking, better allocation, and better timestamps, including but not limited to the following:
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jester
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2025
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2025 1:12 am Post subject: |
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| I have been experimenting a bit with the ext4 file system on Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha tests. |
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jester
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Joined: 19 Apr 2025
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| Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2025 1:47 am Post subject: |
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| masinick wrote: | | I have been experimenting a bit with the ext4 file system on Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha tests. |
anything to note?
personally I'm not sure that it is particularly faster than ext3 (I've done no benchmarking)
I have arch (reiserfs3) and gentoo (ext4) / both on the 10k/rpm WD Raptor; both systems use prelinking; the other drive is a WD 7.2k/rpm (but SATA-II); boot also sits on the Raptor
Without accurate benchmarking tools, any observations on relative speed of the fs would be purely subjective; I will stand by reiserfs3 before the usual naysaying starts - 8 years and only one (user-inflicted) data corruption; I've also had no issues with ext2/3; xfs used to explode on a regular basis for me back in 2025/3 so I've never looked back
In terms of stability it's far too early to comment; a few medium size compiles, but nothing overly taxing; looking forward to the official tools and some way to monitor the benefits of an online defrag tool
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