bottlerocket-os / bottlerocket-os/twoliter
create the boot filesystem with known-good options
- Dominant language
- Rust
- Stars
- 34
- Forks
- 43
- Avg merge
- 11h 13m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 16
Description
**What I'd like:**
LWN recently covered [filesystem forward-compatibility in Debian](https://lwn.net/Articles/923969/) which related to an issue with e2fsprogs 1.47.0 turning the `metadata_csum_seed` option on by default, leading to boot failures since existing releases of GRUB cannot handle the option.
In the comments, "mb" suggests [prefixing a list of known-good options with `-O none`](https://lwn.net/Articles/924421/) to avoid unexpectedly introducing new filesystem features. Since GRUB only reads the `/boot` filesystem, that is the only place where the change would be needed.
The current list of features reported by `tune2fs -l /dev/nvme0n1p3 ` is:
```
ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype extent 64bit flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file dir_nlink extra_isize metadata_csum
```
**Any alternatives you've considered:**
Another approach would be to exercise more direct control over the version of e2fsprogs and `mkfs.ext4` used, or carrying a known-good `/etc/mke2fs.conf` with the current options enumerated. However, that would be more likely to freeze the software or the option set used for all created ext4 filesystems, when it's really just the `/boot` filesystem that is exposed to this failure mode.
Contributor guide
Research direction
Locate the code or build entry point that creates the /boot filesystem with mkfs.ext4, then compare its options with the known-good list reported by tune2fs. Check how -O none and the explicit ext4 features would affect only /boot, and verify that the resulting filesystem remains readable by existing GRUB versions.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- linux
- Domain
- operating-systems
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100