lubuntu-14.04-alternate-powerpc.iso rescue-powerpc missing fsadm

[Mark Millard]

I'm just reporting a property of the lubuntu-14.04-alternate-powerpc.iso's rescue-powerpc mode of use. (I'm not looking for help for figuring out a workaround.)

I tried to use a rescue-powerpc shell from a CD built from lubuntu-14.04-alternate-powerpc.iso to do lvreduce --resizefs against what would normally be a live / (root file system). (md5sum was verified.)

What I discovered was that fsadm is not present in that shell's context. (Nor is apt-get.) The lvreduce use aborts from the lack of finding fsadm. lvreduce itself was found just fine.

Also: "find / -name fsadm -print" from that shell context does not find fsadm, confirming its status.

It may be that lvm's coverage for rescue-powerpc mode is just not to be complete due to CD space requirements and the relative priorities for what can be done fairly directly when booted from that media via the rescue-powerpc selection. Such is not for me to say.

But if lvreduce involving file system shrinkage is not to be supported from rescue-powerpc then it might be a good thing to note some place, letting folks know they need to go elsewhere for that functionality in powerpc land.

Context note: This was on an old iMac G3 that has a built-in CD-ROM drive. DVDs are not a direct option for that context (without presuming extra hardware).

I have not checked other CD .iso's, other processor families, or other ubuntu variants. The point could be more general than I know but I'm just reporting what I've direct evidence of.