[nzlug] Dell are sooo pwn3d

[Simon]

On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 03:45 +1200, Michael Adams wrote:

> http://gnu.org.in/pipermail/gnowsys-dev/2006-August/000156.html
> "if the xfs support is available as a module, then the root partion
> cannot be other than ext2/ext3 for these are native to linux kernel."
> 
> http://forums.techguy.org/unix-linux/552849-file-systems.html#post4560767
> 
> If the above advice has changed, i would be interested to hear it.

Well, being unable to boot from an XFS partition is different from XFS
support being *absent*. Perhaps your observation should have read that
XFS is only supported as a module... which does not provide the
functionality you desire.

I was puzzled about this you see, as I have an XFS partition which
Ubuntu will mount quite happily. Now I see what you mean.

However... the first link refers to *installing* ubuntu, and suggests
that the installation can be completed to boot from XFS. (Yuo missed out
the vital last sentence!) 

But this is unclear... maybe the thinking is that the installer kernel
has XFS as a module but the installed kernel may have it compiled in? Or
maybe that this effect is a quirk of the installer? Unfortunately the
thread was shut down before further discussion could happen.

The techguy link suggests that you can boot from XFS if you use LILO
instead of GRUB.
> It's not a brilliant idea to use XFS because although the performance
> is very good you have to have a separate boot partition using
> something like ext3 in order for grub to work with it otherwise you
> have to use LILO which is much more difficult to configure.
> 

In fact:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub/+bug/8058
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman/+bug/16073
"We already default to LILO when /boot is on XFS"

... seems to be saying that the XFS thing is a GRUB issue and not an
Ubuntu one.

Altogether, I think you could have done better...