antiX Live usb key – boot repair – not working – F2FS

[Member Wallon]

Dear developers,

For your information, I used an antiX 21 Live usb key (kernel 5.10) to repair the grub of an antiX 21 Full installation on another usb key formatted in F2FS.

1) control center
2) maintenance
3) boot repair
I tested the first 2 options, i.e.;
– reinstall the GRUB on ESP, MBR or PRB(root)
– repair the GRUB configuration file

This does not work for an F2FS format.

I did a full reinstallation. Is it possible to add this F2FS formatting to the bootrepair tool?

Best regards,
Wallon

[Member Wallon]

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Dear users,

I have found a solution.
You need to install at least 3 partitions;
1) a 512 M /boot partition formatted ext4,
2) a swap partition formatted swap,
3) a /root partition formatted f2fs,
4) you can have a 4th partition for data shared with other OS.

While upgrading a fresh install, Debian wanted to update the Grub. I said yes and chose the /boot partition.
I rebooted the PC and it appears that the Grub is broken.

With another Live USB key, I followed the following steps;
1) control centre,
2) disk
3) automount
4) I unchecked automount

Then I did this;
1) control centre
2) maintenance,
3) boot repair
4) reinstall Grub
5.1) install in MBR
5.2) location: sdb
5.3) select root location: sdb3 (/root)

I have repaired the Grub successfully.

For people who are disappointed with Ubuntu, come and try antiX on a USB stick formatted in f2fs. It works very well.

Best regards,
Wallon

Attachments:

1. 

   0_USB_partitions.pdf
   

2. 

   1_automount_disable.jpg
   

3. 

   2_reinstal_grub.jpg
   

4. 

   3_repair_sdb.jpg
   

[Member Wallon]

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Here is the last screenshot.

Attachments:

1. 

   4_success_repair_i386-pc.jpg
   

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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What are the advantages of using F2FS rather than ext4?

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member Wallon]

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Dear anticapitalista,

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the web.

It seems obvious, f2fs is more and more recommended for managing USB sticks, SD cards or new SSD drives.

In the Android world, Samsung, Xiaomi … install f2fs directly on internal memories. They have abandoned ext4 for some smartphone models.

At Raspberry, f2fs has become the recommended formatting for installation on SD cards, USB keys…

I see speed spikes when watching Conky for certain operations on my USB sticks that I never saw with ext4 formatting.

Examples with f2fs formatting,
– the “sudo apt update” command goes a bit faster,
– installing antiX is a bit faster,
– clearing browsing history in Google Chrome is a bit faster.

f2fs handles data as if TRIM was permanently on.

f2fs extends the life of USB sticks, SD cards because there are fewer writes.

The ext4 formatting was developed to manage hard disks.

I admit that I am not a computer scientist and that my approach is empirical. But when I see that my MX Linux installation on my best external SSD (Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD 250GB/Go – up to 550 MB/s – Mo/s – USB C) formatted in ext4 takes longer to clear the browsing history of Google Chrome than my stupid USB sticks in f2fs for antiX 21 Full…
This has prompted me to experiment more and more with f2fs formatting for my USB drives.

I’m not forcing anyone to use f2fs but I have an open mind about the new recommendations made in the Linux world.

Some distributions don’t even allow you to do an installation with the f2fs option.

I thank you, dear anticapitalista, for letting me choose this f2fs option.

If I find that it is not stable, I will tell you right away on the forum.

Thanks again for all your dedication to the antiX community.

Best regards,
Wallon

[Member Wallon]

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Dear users,

Here is a copy of my fstab to handle f2fs formatting on a USB 3.0 stick/key.

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
UUID=85c897e2-99c3-425f-883f-f478319669aa /       f2fs nodiscard,noatime,lazytime 0 0
UUID=1486d372-b599-42d0-978c-ad7c6daf9060 /boot   ext4 nodiscard,noatime          0 2
UUID=3a7c8257-800d-49bd-9186-0df74cb1cdaa swap    swap defaults                   0 0

You will notice in the
– the second to last column that I put zeros everywhere because I don’t use dump,
– the last column (fdisk) that I also put zeros for the swap and f2fs partitions. (*) (**)

(*) As fdisk is very slow to run on f2fs partitions, it is recommended to disable the option.

(**) For the /boot partition in ext4, you can put 2 or 0. It is up to you.

During installation, antiX considers the fourth partition FAT32 as another USB stick and will therefore be managed by uDev.

Best regards,
Wallon

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