[Bug 872826] f18 anaconda - no option to install bootloader to a partition

[John Reiser]

On 12/03/2012 05:44 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 04:12:09PM -0700, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> 
>> This sounds like a different bug than the one thats in the report
>> above. I'd advise the commenter to open a new one on mkfs or anaconda
>> to change the boot sector padding. 
> 
> It's part of the filesystem format, there's no way to change it.

This may be true, but not a priori.  extN has feature flags which can
be used to enable leaving more space, or other larger space at a "constant"
offset.  For example, the first otherwise-allocatable filesystem block might
be permanently allocated for use by booting.  There may be other ways, too.

If not, then there is ext5.  Deprecate ext4 for its mistake in not allowing
a maximal-sized filesystem block [8KiB] for the boot block.

And oh by the way, several years ago ext3 was "fixed" in a non-backwards
compatible way involving symbolic links.  The "fix" changed the interpretation
of on-disk file system data!

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