ext3, ext4 on floppy

Doug dmcgarrett at optonline.net
Mon Dec 6 00:32:33 UTC 2010


On 12/05/2010 02:06 PM, Jonathan Matthews wrote:
> On 5 December 2010 16:25, Aneto<aneto1 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Is it possible to use ext3 or ext4 on floppy disk ?
> A floppy presents a block device, so you can use any filesystem on top
> of it.  You may find that the main reason for using those specific
> filesystems instead of ext2, that they are journalled, may not be
> possible due to the default/minimum active journal size being measured
> in the megabytes.
>
> Also, you may experience ease-of-user / interoperability issues when
> inserting the disk into even one machine, let alone other boxes.
>
> I'd stick with FAT1[26]. Or throw the floppy drive away :-)
>
> Jonathan
Rant mode on:

It upsets me, to put it mildly, when I'm told to throw away something that
works fine.  Especially floppies.  If y ou want to move a file or a 
directory
that fits on a floppy, and it's not to a network computer, there's no 
simpler
way to do it.

Other things in this category:  serial and parallel ports.  There are data-
harvesting programs with hardware that depend on serial ports, and there
are perfectly good laser printers that don't have usb connections and rely
on parallel ports.  (I'm OK so far, but I see the new stuff has thrown 
all that
out with the bathwater.  I'd like to keep those babies, thank you!

And I just obtained a very small very simple computer mainly to play with,
but it has usb ports and they are supposed to support an external mouse.
Of five pointing devices  I tried, two worked, one didn't, neither of two
trackballs worked. Thanx, usb! All these devices work on other computers
using usb, but it's obviously not as "universal" as it's cracked up to be.

Also, a PS2-mouse to usb adapter did not work on a computer that can
use a usb mouse. It has no PS-2 port, so I can't use that 3-button
trackball that I'd like to use for Linux.  The only three-button device
I know of that you can still buy costs $400! (I don't know if it is 
available
with usb, but it hardly matters!)

Rant off.

doug

-- 
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley





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