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Posts: 946 | Thanked: 1,650 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Germany
#6
Thanks for elaborating your concerns.

Originally Posted by javispedro View Post
I voted against. So what use is to have a ext3 MyDocs partition? Most people are already storing their documents in FAT32 USB drives already. I don't need symlinks nor fancy features to store my documents, and in fact it is mounted noexec for a reason.
And I can't see what are the benefits of having a 25GiB FAT32 loop file in a 27GiB ext3 partition instead of a 25GiB FAT32 partition and a 2GiB ext3 partition
For people who
* use a single-user Windows with a FAT fs (no NTFS, no compression or encryption, and only few small files)
* and will never install more than 2GB apps
* and who will never need more than 2GB in their $HOME (e.g. only smal email folder)
my solution is neither helpful nor harmful.

But for tech-savy people (which I believe a high percentage of the Maemo community is) who would like to
* use different modern file systems (ext3, NTFS, reiserfs, zfs, HFS+ etc)
with their extra features (POSIX, permissions, compression, efficient storage for small files, encryption - important for a mobile device, versioning or backup etc)
to store or sync files with their desktop
* need are large $HOME
* use the flash efficiently (see later)
* export different filesystem images depending on the context (e.g. FAT image for compatibility, ext3 at home)
my solution offers them much more flexibility.

Also, $HOME is already ext3.
Don't think that making it ext3 will instantly remove the 2GiB limit in /opt and $HOME. Do you want them unmounted when connected through USB?
Please have a look at my loop-device solution in the brainstorm.
It already works flawlessly on my N900 and it would be great it was default
so that users would not have to go through the hassle of repartitioning their MMC.

Basically you would have a single ext3 partition on the MMC flash mounted as /home.
On this partition you would not only store /opt and $HOME but also virtual disk images
with arbitrary size and filesystem.
The images are sparse files, i.e only allocated sectors in the disk image are actually
allocated on the ext3 fs and free space is not wasted.
This way you could have at virtual 20GB FAT image (with 10GB used) and your
ext3 fs would still have 22GB free (32 minus 10GB).
It is possible to create several images and to select which one is unmounted and exported for USB mass storage mode.
Before you say "dynamically resizable!" consider that for me the only difference is that with the loop file method I won't have to use e2resizefs (but I'll have to use a tool to resize the FAT32 filesystem either way).
it's not easy to use e2resizefs on /home as you'd have to umount it first.
AFAIK online resizing works only for growth.
Its much easier to resize an optional disk image than a crucial partition which
holds most of your apps and your home.
Of course, if you don't care about windows or exporting through USB.... but that's not the common use case here. Still, I agree it has to be possible to do this on your own device.
see above. It already works perfectly with Windows and USB mass storage mode.
 

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