fstab - # UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM

[hmunster]

Hi,

I'm sure I'm missing something pretty obvious here but.......if you don't ask  :-)

I have just purchased a Sheevaplug with a 4Gb SD card and have almost installed 'The Perfect Server - Ubuntu 9.04 [ISPConfig 3]' but the text is asking me to edit /etc/fstab to add ',usrquota,grpquota' to the partition with the mount point /) so it looks something like:

/               ext3    relatime,errors=remount-ro,usrquota,grpquota 0       1

But the fstab file only contains the line # UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM.

Can you offer me any pointers here as to what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,

Dave

[NewIT_Marcus]

The rootfs is defined in the U-Boot parameters. These elements are relevant:

Code:

bootargs_root_mmc=root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootdelay=5
bootcmd_mmc=setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console) $(bootargs_root_mmc); mmcinit; ext2load mmc 0:1 0x800000 /uImage; bootm 0x00800000

/dev/mmcblk0p2 is partition #2 on the SD card.


In your recommended entry:

Code:

/               ext3    relatime,errors=remount-ro,usrquota,grpquota 0       1

Here's some stuff about relatime

errors=remount-ro means that if errors occur an fsck check, the filesystem may be mounted read-only. (Most likely as an aid to system recovery).

usrquota,grpquota is new to me, but unsurprisingly (see here, for instance), enables "users quota and group quota support".

So, there are 2 or more questions to be answered.

1. Which of these functions do you need?
2. Is there a way of passing these parameters through from U-Boot? (I think the answer here is no)

and maybe:
3. What other techniques can provide the same functionality?

The quota stuff is probably mostly relevant to /home, and possibly relevant to /var. You could create additional partitions and fstab entries if you wanted to follow your instructions to the letter. But the first question that needs to be answered is #1 above.

[capi]

2. Is there a way of passing these parameters through from U-Boot? (I think the answer here is no)

Apologies for reviving a very old thread, but I thought this might be useful for future reference.

One can tell the kernel which options to use when mounting the root filesystem through the kernel command line, using the rootflags parameter. Something like the following should do the trick:

Code:

rootflags=usrquota,grpquota

I do wonder whether it would be necessary to force these specific flags in the early read-only kernel mount, though. The filesystem will still be remounted read-write by the boot scripts, and those will usually honor fstab (as long as the "new" options can be set on a re-mount, which usrquota and grpquota can). The rootfs /etc/fstab entry on my DreamPlug for example (running Debian 6.0), currently looks like this:

Code:

# override rootfs's mount options (reduce writes to disk)
rootfs / rootfs rw,noatime,commit=300,barrier=0 0 0

And indeed I have the following after boot (without changing anything in the kernel command line through u-boot):

Code:

# dmesg | grep re-mounted
EXT4-fs (sda2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=300,barrier=0
# grep root /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext4 rw,noatime,commit=300,barrier=0,data=ordered 0 0

Incidentally, another parameter which may be of use is rootfstype, for when one wants to explicitly state the root filesystem type. I have a box whose rootfs is an ext3, but I want to take advantage of ext4's backwards-compatible features (such as delayed allocation and multiblock allocation). The relevant portion of the kernel command-line on that system is as follows:

Code:

root=/dev/sda2 rootfstype=ext4