XFS root on Fedora 8AXP install ???

[Robert M. Riches Jr.]

> Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 18:10:19 -0400
> From: John Grzesiak <johng at pcrd.net>
>
>      I am a fan of XFS... I have been using it as a root filesystem for most
> of my other Linux platforms for a while now. I tried to add it to the
> command line as I used to for Fedora 4,5,6 in x86 platform, but, it's
> unavailable in the text mode installer... (only thing available at present
> on my AS-4100 .. my Matrox and S3Virge cards won't start X...). Has it been
> intentionally removed for AXP or is this an oversight ???
>
>      XFS is what I want.. I have worked with JFS and REISERFS too, but, have
> too many problems. I managed to get XFS to work really well with most
> stuff...  (And I have the secret that gets the delete speed up to snuff
> too!)... 
>
>      BTW I was able to use XFS as data partitions all day long in
> AC3... very stable for what it's worth...
>
>      Also, I don't see the LVM selection in the text menu... I sort of like
> to use the logical volume with software RAID... It's the easiest way to have
> your SWAP mirrored... What could be up there  ??

I don't know whether Alpha can boot from XFS, but there may
be a way to format the filesystem.  At least when I did my
last installation on Alpha (around 2002-2003), one of the
text consoles (I forget whether it's Alt-Ctrl-F1,
Alt-Ctrl-F2, or another one) was a root shell.  On one of my
first installations, after Disk Druid had made a terrible
mess of my partitions, I used the root shell to redo the
partitioning, correctly this time.

As soon as the installer boots up, switch to that text
console and do your partitioning and formatting there from
the command line.  Then, if you're lucky, the installer will
let you use the existing partitions and filesystems.
There's a slim chance it might even recognize and reformat
(empty out) an existing XFS filesystem.

One suggestion: Especially for non-X86 architectures that
may not have live-CD distributions available, it can be
helpful to have multiple Linux installation areas on one
machine.  That way, if something breaks fatally in one
installation, you can boot up the other installation, mount
the broken one's filesystems, and manually fix things up.

(I miss my Alpha...)

Robert Riches
rm.riches at verizon.net