Sd Cards Using Ext2 Filesystem?

[Megatog615]

Is it possible for the GP2X to read SD cards formatted with ext2? I'd like to take advantage of symlinks and the like(to save space). Plus, FAT/32 isn't exactly the most stable filesystem out there. I've had all kinds of problems with FAT on my SD card. I have had to reformat a couple of times due to massive file system errors randomly occurring during writes. Can I format it for ext2 and have it work with my 2X?

 

[Mudi]

Possible, but IMO not worth the hassle. I think you have to mount the filesystem yourself (or set an autorun script to do it) because the GP2X (stupid) bootprocess will only mount FAT32 automatically. Also, you might have trouble with some games... a lot of them have been coded so it works on FAT32 but they aren't necessarily going to work when you use a filesystem with more features (especially case sensitivity)

 

[tomj]

Another reason not to use ext2 is that SD cards use flash memory which has a limited number of read/write cycles I think its about 10,000 because ext2 is a journaling file systems parts of the memory get written to very regularly this can wear out that sector and cause lots of problems.

 

[Orkie]

ext2 does not have a journal -- you're thinking of ext3.

 

[clone]

Personally I keep the first partition as FAT32 and have an ext2 partition as the second partition. I placed a mount script on my primary partition that mounts the second partition to the "ext" part of the file system. I also have an unmount script on there, both of the scripts are easy to access via gmenu2x. So yes, ext2 is possible, and if you look around the nand I'm sure you'll find the correct file to edit (never looked myself, but maybe editing fstab or something like that will work. Or maybe it doesn't even have an fstab... who knows.)

 

[Mudi]

^ I believe it ignores fstab and mounts everything (/mnt/nand and /mnt/sd) in the menu application, which is idiotic, I can't wait for Open2X to fix the stupidity of the GP2X boot process.

 

[Orkie]

That is actually a myth The menu does not mount the SD card at all, it seems to be the driver which does so using fstab, and fstab is hardwired to vfat instead of auto. It is also mounted in /root/start.sh before the menu loads for the first time and possibly some other locations, but not the menu as far as I can tell. It is still a very silly way of doing it though...