Linux 6.9 Deprecates The EXT2 File-System Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.9 Deprecates The EXT2 File-System Driver

While Linux 6.9 brings many great changes and new features / hardware support, on the deprecation side it's deprecating the classic EXT2 file-system driver...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.9-Deprecates-EXT2

[waxhead]

So no functionality lost and the migration path is simply replacing the number 2 with 4.
the only real issue here is if the filesystem is moved between a ext2 only system/device and a newer one. In any case Linux are one of the few things that are still free in the world so it's just a matter of downloading a 'older' distro to avoid that problem.

[byteabit]

I wonder who still uses EXT2? Servers? Anyone who can install Linux on the system, can most probably use EXT4 or at least 3 I guess.

[kylew77]

The last bare metal install I did for my mom in Xubuntu 16.04 I used ext2 for /boot because I heard it was faster than ext4 and that is what I had been doing for years, ext2 for /boot ext4 or xfs for / and /home. It sounds like from the article that the ext4 driver can still read ext2 partitions so I should be OK?

[cynic]

The last bare metal install I did for my mom in Xubuntu 16.04 I used ext2 for /boot because I heard it was faster than ext4 and that is what I had been doing for years, ext2 for /boot ext4 or xfs for / and /home. It sounds like from the article that the ext4 driver can still read ext2 partitions so I should be OK?

you'd notice very marginal performance benefits only for writes. Since boot is almost a read-only fs, you have 0 benefits from using ext2 but the risk of finding it corrupted in case of sudden shutdown.

upgrade to ext4!

[dlq84]

So no functionality lost and the migration path is simply replacing the number 2 with 4.
the only real issue here is if the filesystem is moved between a ext2 only system/device and a newer one. In any case Linux are one of the few things that are still free in the world so it's just a matter of downloading a 'older' distro to avoid that problem.

Trust me, there's gonna be at least 2 pissed off people here with an obscure use-case.

[Anux]

you'd notice very marginal performance benefits only for writes. Since boot is almost a read-only fs, you have 0 benefits from using ext2 but the risk of finding it corrupted in case of sudden shutdown.

upgrade to ext4!

Exactly, another area where there might be a measurable difference is in boot times (when checking the journal) but since boot is typically below 1 GB that shouldn't be even a second. And then again you want journal especially for /boot, upgrade now!

[Lysius]

To my knowledge EXT2 is mostly identical to EXT3 without journal (or EXT3 is EXT2 with added journal). EXT4 adds some more no longer backwards compatible features, but is fundamentally still the same file system architecture. Any driver that can mount EXT3 file systems should be able to mount EXT2 file systems. As long as none of the new features of EXT4 or the journal are enabled (should not happen automatically), an EXT2 file system mounted with the EXT4 or EXT3 driver should stay an EXT2 file system compatible with the old EXT2 driver.
If the dedicated EXT2 file system driver is not present, the kernel will likely just transparently use the EXT4 driver instead without any user space change required.

[Lysius]

Exactly, another area where there might be a measurable difference is in boot times (when checking the journal) but since boot is typically below 1 GB that shouldn't be even a second. And then again you want journal especially for /boot, upgrade now!

Shouldn't the journal replay even be skipped if the file system has been cleanly unmounted?

[Weasel]

The last bare metal install I did for my mom in Xubuntu 16.04 I used ext2 for /boot because I heard it was faster than ext4 and that is what I had been doing for years, ext2 for /boot ext4 or xfs for / and /home. It sounds like from the article that the ext4 driver can still read ext2 partitions so I should be OK?

boot should be FAT32.