Re: Feature Request

[Kevin Freeman <kfreem02 comcast net>]

 >  The real question is will redhat accept patches to add xfs, and
> reiserfs support to the installer?

NOTE: The following applied to Red Hat 9, I have not tried out the new beta.

Yes they do accept patches, but it is a complicated topic.  Anaconda 
itself already has low level support for the filesystems you listed - it 
just does not allow users to select those options in the GUI.  By 
booting CD 1 with "linux reiserfs" or "linux xfs" the GUI would allow 
you to create a partition of the desired type, and could also upgrade a 
non-raid partition of the desired type.

In April I supplied patches that allowed anaconda to support reiserfs on 
a root raid, and the patches were put into rawhide a month or two ago. 
Unless Red Hat recently ripped the code out, all it needs is a boot 
kernel built with the reiserfs module (Red Hat 9 had such a kernel). 
Look at the anaconda code to see how to support additional file systems 
on raid/LVM, it is only about 10 lines or so per fs type.  See fsset.py 
and partedUtils.py and grep for reiserfs.  The patched anaconda properly 
recognizes/mounts reiserfs on raid when invoked from Red Hat 9 CD1 with 
"linux rescue reiserfs updates" and with "linux reiserfs updates".  The 
updates parameter tells anaconda to load patched files from floppy.  See 
the following URL for more detail:
http://home.comcast.net/~kfreem02/LinuxTips/ReiserFS-on-RAID.html

Kevin