Comments on: Filesystem with huge files cannot be mounted read-write without CONFIG_LBDAF

By: Zornitsa

Zornitsa — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:28:16 +0000

Thanks for the post. Figured that one myself the hard way — been configuring kernel all weekend But you know nothing before you’ve messed a couple of kernels ))

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:18:50 +0000

You can boot off a different device, some kind of rescue CD would probably be the easiest.

By: Slava

Slava — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:37:47 +0000

sorry for a lame question, but what if it is my root partition? tune2fs is unable to clear huge_file flag from it when it mounted, and I can not remount it read-only.

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:12:54 +0000

Thanks for this! I’ll update the article and add the info.

By: Marcus H

Marcus H — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:24:44 +0000

For removing the huge_file option from the filesystem without destroying it you can use this command
tune2fs -O ^huge_file /dev/sda1
then run
fsck /dev/sda1
and it should mount without CONFIG_LBDAF in your kernel.

By: Alessandro Selli

Alessandro Selli — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:37:21 +0000

Since the problem is caused by mke2fs.ext4 that by default formats with the huge_file feature on, one can format a new partition giving a set of features that overrides the default and that does not include the huge_file one:

mke2fs -t ext4 -O has_journal,extents,flex_bg,uninit_bg,dir_nlink,extra_isize

Or, one could edit the /etc/mke2fs.conf file and remove the huge_file feature among the default ones, as I did on my Gentoo desktop. I don’t know if one can change the features without reformatting and already formatted partition, though.

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:55:30 +0000

Indeed, the fooconfig targets offer dependency checking. But I guess the kernel hackers have their reasons for not enabling it, after all not everybody uses the same mkfs options.

By: gg

gg — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:24:05 +0000

thanks. this saved me an headache :/
I guess the feature should be automatically flagged whenever ext4 is selected.

By: nicolas

nicolas — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:52:15 +0000

Nice, I didn’t know about the search functionality in menuconfig yet. Thanks for pointing that out!

By: Arix

Arix — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:46:35 +0000

I forgot to add, that I too was custom building the kernel version 2.6.31 (on an old Toshiba laptop).

Thank you