Mount and ext3 issues with Busybox 1.2.2.1

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Thursday 16 November 2006 23:16, Jim Gifford wrote:
> I've taken this step a little further, instead of using my dynamic 
> linked version, I tried to build busybox statically. The same errors 
> occur. Then I also tried using a glibc static linked version, again the 
> same failure.

Are you using busybox's mke2fs? If yes, try using "standard" one.

I think that having specialized filesystem utilities in busybox
is a mistake. Filesystems are critical to people's data.
Bugfixes to them are critical. Bugs can be particularly deadly
("busybox's e2fsck ate my disk!!!").

It is not reasonable to expect busybox version of e.g.
reiserfsck to be kept up-to-date. Well, unless we will have
particularly devoted maintainer for such a task.

Currently we don't have one. e2fs code is not actively maintained.
What I see there - I don't like it. Random example:

char *e2fs_set_sbin_path(void)
{
        char *oldpath = getenv("PATH");
        /* Update our PATH to include /sbin  */
#define PATH_SET "/sbin"
        if (oldpath)
                oldpath = xasprintf("%s:%s", PATH_SET, oldpath);
         else
                oldpath = PATH_SET;
        putenv (oldpath);
        return oldpath;
}

Since when utilities decide what should be in PATH??
I (user) is in charge here!
--
vda