tune2fs -O ea_inode... means system won't boot...

[Peter Silva]

Hi there,

I was working on an app where we use really large extended file attributes.
So I noticed I was getting errors setting them too large. I read up and saw
that is a file system dependent limitation, and there is this nifty ext4
tuning parameter ea_inode  that lets you have arbitrarily large attributes.

ominous foreshadowing: the man page says that tune2fs only supports setting
this option, not clearing/removing it.

I did the tune2fs -O ea_inode , tried my app, and rejoiced, it works
perfectly now! when I reboot ...  I am left with a grub prompt...
if I do ls (hd,gpt4)/   it answers "unknown filesystem" ...

I use a single file system for root and /home and everything ... so that's
my everything...

I booted from a usb-drive and ran update-grub and friends... but it always
gives this "unknown filesystem" error... I tried running grub-probe
manually, and sure enough, it doesn't like my file system.

I thought it was some kind of update-grub thing... but no... I found the
bug reports... if you set certain flags in your ext4, grub falls over.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=866603

ea_inode is in the list.

I tried clearing the bit tune2fs -O^ea_inode /dev/nvme0n1p4   and you
remember that note? yeah... it says "Clearing filesystem feature "ea_inode"
not supported.

so... I think I have to re-install and use a separate file system for /
vs. /home... good practice anyways... but that sounds like work...

so... maybe grub 2.12 for jammy can save me?  Any ideas on where a backport
for jammy might be?  I didn't see one.

Other ideas?
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