Bug#969516: Please support installing onto f2fs root filesystem

[Stephan Lachnit]

Since we now have f2fs support in parted [1], we could
go back to adding partman-f2fs to d-i. It's been quite
a while since I did this, so I'll have to some reading
again. But is anyone even interested to sponsor this
before the freeze? Else, the effort is not really worth
it (for now).

Regards,
Stephan Lachnit

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/parted-team/parted/-/merge_requests/3#note_216035
[2] https://salsa.debian.org/stephanlachnit/partman-f2fs

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Post by Stephan Lachnit
Since we now have f2fs support in parted [1], we could
go back to adding partman-f2fs to d-i. It's been quite
a while since I did this, so I'll have to some reading
again. But is anyone even interested to sponsor this
before the freeze? Else, the effort is not really worth
it (for now).

I would be willing to sponsor this but I'm not sure whether such
a change would be a good idea a little over a week from the soft
freeze.

FWIW, I'm also planning to add support for another filesystem
in debian-installer, namely HFS+. But definitely not before the
freeze.

Adrian

[Stephan Lachnit]

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
I would be willing to sponsor this but I'm not sure whether such
a change would be a good idea a little over a week from the soft
freeze.

Cool. I've revisited it and I have it working in a Virtual Machine.
Will try a physical ASAP, but I think it's ready for testing.

Regards,
Stephan

[Stephan Lachnit]

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
I would be willing to sponsor this but I'm not sure whether such
a change would be a good idea a little over a week from the soft
freeze.

Can you sponsor the upload [1] already? This won't add the package
to the installer, but we will decide to have it include in bullseye
(which I really hope), we better upload it ASAP to NEW.

Regards,
Stephan

[1] https://mentors.debian.net/package/partman-f2fs/

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Post by Stephan Lachnit

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
I would be willing to sponsor this but I'm not sure whether such
a change would be a good idea a little over a week from the soft
freeze.

Can you sponsor the upload [1] already? This won't add the package
to the installer, but we will decide to have it include in bullseye
(which I really hope), we better upload it ASAP to NEW.

Has anyone reviewed the package yet and has there been any input from
other d-i maintainers? I think at least KiBi should give his OK whether
he wants to introduce such a change this late in the release process.

FWIW, someone already tried to upload it without prior coordination
on this mailing list but the upload got rejected because that person
just has DM rights. It's not really okay to make such uploads without
coordination with the d-i team when we're just before the Bullseye
release - although I understand the motivation.

Adrian

[Stuart]

Is there any update to this? I can't find the source anywhere to test it
myself either.

[Cyril Brulebois]

F2FS is high quality file system which use millions Android phones on whole planet earth. It is not any experimental unreliable file system, but F2FS is big project.
F2FS works on Android very dependable and I believe, that equally dependable will works on PCs with SSD.
I read, that F2FS works on HDD the same reliably as on SSD.
First release of F2FS was in year 2012. Now is Year 2025. Debian and Ubuntu hesitate and procrastinate with F2FS innovation 13 years. It is so terrible. Debian and Ubuntu is in delay 13 years.

The tone and content of your mails are not appropriate. Please stop.


Cheers,

[Lennart Sorensen]

F2FS is high quality file system which use millions Android phones on whole planet earth. It is not any experimental unreliable file system, but F2FS is big project.
F2FS works on Android very dependable and I believe, that equally dependable will works on PCs with SSD.
I read, that F2FS works on HDD the same reliably as on SSD.
First release of F2FS was in year 2012. Now is Year 2025. Debian and Ubuntu hesitate and procrastinate with F2FS innovation 13 years. It is so terrible. Debian and Ubuntu is in delay 13 years.

F2FS was designed for raw nand flash drives, not managed flash as an SSD
is. It is not tolerant of power failures (so fine on a phone or tablet
that has battery and knows the power state, not so fine on a generic PC).

On a drive with built in management of the flash, as any SSD used in a
PC has, ext4 is a much better choice than F2FS with better performance
and better reliability.

So Debian and Ubuntu have sensibly not bothered to offer the user the
choice to use a filesystem that would be a terrible idea to use in
general.

F2FS works just fine when used in the right place, which is on raw
flash chips on devices with safe power supply. It does not work well
in other settings.

So what you read is either wrong, or you didn't understand the conditions
that were listed as required to make it reliable.

[Holger Wansing]

Control: tags -1 + wontfix

Post by Lennart Sorensen
F2FS was designed for raw nand flash drives, not managed flash as an SSD
is. It is not tolerant of power failures (so fine on a phone or tablet
that has battery and knows the power state, not so fine on a generic PC).
On a drive with built in management of the flash, as any SSD used in a
PC has, ext4 is a much better choice than F2FS with better performance
and better reliability.
So Debian and Ubuntu have sensibly not bothered to offer the user the
choice to use a filesystem that would be a terrible idea to use in
general.
F2FS works just fine when used in the right place, which is on raw
flash chips on devices with safe power supply. It does not work well
in other settings.
So what you read is either wrong, or you didn't understand the conditions
that were listed as required to make it reliable.

[Pascal Hambourg]

Post by Lennart Sorensen

I read, that F2FS works on HDD the same reliably as on SSD.

F2FS was not designed for HDD nor SSD with sophisticated flash controllers.

Post by Lennart Sorensen
F2FS was designed for raw nand flash drives

F2FS was designed for "dumb" flash drives such as USB sticks, SD/MMC
cards or PCMCIA memory cards. They have a simpler integrated flash
controller than SSD, but they are not "raw flash".

Post by Lennart Sorensen
It is not tolerant of power failures

Even when mounting with barrier,fsync_mode=strict ?

Post by Lennart Sorensen
(so fine on a phone or tablet
that has battery and knows the power state, not so fine on a generic PC).

But fine on a laptop PC.

Post by Lennart Sorensen
On a drive with built in management of the flash, as any SSD used in a
PC has, ext4 is a much better choice than F2FS with better performance
and better reliability.
So Debian and Ubuntu have sensibly not bothered to offer the user the
choice to use a filesystem that would be a terrible idea to use in
general.

I don't know about Ubuntu, but Debian does not target only generic PC
but also a wide range of hardware, including ARM boards which usually
boot from a SD card or USB stick. Even on PC, a portable installation on
USB stick could come in handy. Also udeb packages providing F2FS kernel
module and tools are available for the Debian installer and even
included in installation ISO images, so I assume that adding F2FS
support was considered at some point.

Post by Lennart Sorensen
F2FS works just fine when used in the right place, which is on raw
flash chips

AFAIK F2FS works only on block devices and raw flash memory chips are
managed by the Linux kernel as MTD (memory technology device), not block
devices. Specific flash filesystems such as YAFFS or UBIFS have been
designed for raw MTD.

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

tags -1 + wontfix

Bug #969516 [debian-installer] Please support installing onto f2fs root filesystem
Added tag(s) wontfix.