# not mounting ext4 slackware partition @ boot? Why?

## vexatious

Using kernel kernel-2.6.35-gentoo-r5. Gentoo is using ext4 as well as my slackware 13.1 install. Why is Gentoo not mounting my slackware drive @ boot time? It says something about unsupported options. Here is my /etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# noatime turns off atimes for increased performance (atimes normally aren't 

# needed; notail increases performance of ReiserFS (at the expense of storage 

# efficiency).  It's safe to drop the noatime options if you want and to 

# switch between notail / tail freely.

#

# The root filesystem should have a pass number of either 0 or 1.

# All other filesystems should have a pass number of 0 or greater than 1.

#

# See the manpage fstab(5) for more information.

#

# <fs>			<mountpoint>	<type>		<opts>		<dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.

#/dev/BOOT		/boot		ext2		noauto,noatime	1 2

/dev/sda2		/		ext3		noatime		0 1

/dev/sda1		none		swap		sw		0 0

/dev/sda3		/mnt/slackware  ext3		noatime		0 0

#/dev/cdrom		/mnt/cdrom	auto		noauto,ro	0 0

#/dev/fd0		/mnt/floppy	auto		noauto		0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for 

# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).

# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will

#  use almost no memory if not populated with files)

proc			/proc		proc		defaults	0 0

shm			/dev/shm	tmpfs		nodev,nosuid,noexec	0 0

My /etc/mtab : 

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0

/dev/root / ext4 rw,noatime,commit=0 0 0

devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=449188k,nr_inodes=112297,mode=755 0 0

proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0

rc-svcdir /lib/rc/init.d tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=1024k,mode=755 0 0

sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0

securityfs /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0

debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0

devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620 0 0

shm /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0

usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw,noexec,nosuid,devmode=0664,devgid=85 0 0

nfsd /proc/fs/nfsd nfsd rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0

/dev/sda3 /mnt/slackware ext4 rw 0 0

I don't see what the problem is? It's fine when I do a | mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/slackware |; but I shouldn't have to do that everytime I boot up my computer. I also tried options 0 1 in the fstab but that didn't help to change it's mind. Gentoo Rocks my socks!

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## BradN

If you're using ext4, shouldn't you be putting that in your fstab instead of ext3?  For both your root partition and /mnt/slackware...

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## vexatious

OMG! lol. Yeah I thought you had to use ext3 for ext4 (since it's ext3 with some addons). The obviousness is bizarre and was overlooked! 

Thanks!

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## BradN

Yeah I know you can normally mount ext3 as ext2 (depending what ext3 features are already being used in the filesystem) but you still have to tell it ext3 or you won't get the journalling and such.  The ext3 driver can handle ext2 filesystems fine but gives a warning.  With ext4 I guess it's not backwards compatible enough to even mount (or perhaps the error came from fsck trying to check the filesystem?)

C'mon now, gentoo AND slackware?  You should be at the level of writing the filesystem drivers!  lol j/k  (actually that's how I really got into linux, slackware first...  didn't learn shit from redhat)

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## Hu

Some of the new ext4 features are represented on disk in a way that ext3 cannot understand.  It is legal to mount an ext3 volume as ext4, and doing so will result in a volume that is still valid ext3 when you unmount.  However, the reverse is disallowed entirely, to prevent the ext3 driver from corrupting your filesystem by mishandling structures it does not understand.

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