live-build lacks EXT4 support for binary image types

[Ben Howard]

live-build can build ext2 and ext3 binary image types, but does not have support for ext4. Since ext4 is used on our cloud images, we need to have ext4 support.

This affects the Oneiric version of live-build.

Patch that fixes this is attached.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: live-build 3.0

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks for your patch. Could you forward it to Debian? We're trying to get our live-build package in sync with Debian, and the maintainer there is typically responsive.

(When you forward the patch, I suggest leaving out the whitespace-only change to lb_binary_usb, fixing the spelling of LB_BINARY_FILESYSTEM in two places in lb_binary_virtual-hdd and removing the spurious '.' in the same file, and dropping the commenting-out of 'cp -af binary/.disk* binary.tmp' in lb_binary_virtual-hdd.)

[Ben Howard (utlemming)]

I have a much more comprehensive patch that deals with building cloud images -- so lets drop this and I will work on getting the fine folks at Debian to accept the patches.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

Ben, any progress on this? The ARM team could also use a live-build that knows about ext4.
thanks

[Ben Howard (utlemming)]

Yes, our code base for generating cloud images has EXT4 support -- check out http:://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-on-ec2/~ubuntu-on-ec2/live-build/cloud-images/

The code needs a bit of work so that it can be merged back in. The big area of work that I've done is to add a "cloud" target that produces an image that is suitable for booting in the cloud. Ping me out-of-band if you have any questions.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

Ben, aren't the ext4 -only bits that Colin commented above suitable for upstreaming independently of the rest of your work?

[Ben Howard (utlemming)]

I didn't do anything more with the EXT4 patch, however, the patch with a little more cleanup is suitable for upstreaming. Our plan is to upstream the entire code base. The attached patch is a cleaned-up version of the original.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

Critical feature for ubuntu-arm, moving to high and milestoning to B2

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The attachment live-build-ext4-1.patch of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-sponsors please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report. [This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by Brian Murray. Please contact him regarding any issues with the action taken in this bug report.]

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

There is a new version with the functionality included in Debian experimental.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package live-build - 3.0~a24-1ubuntu15

---------------
live-build (3.0~a24-1ubuntu15) oneiric; urgency=low

  * Backport from upstream:
    - Add support for ext4 for binary and chroot filesystems (LP: #803547).
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:26:17 +0100