Don't use -J size=# for /root and expect to boot

[FastTurtle]

Hi all:

Something I discovered the hard way (as usual). When booting, if your "/root" partition is configured with anything other then the default journal size [mke2fs -j] a vanilla-source kernel will puke on you and complain that there is a bad superblock and will not allow you to select a backup to continue booting.

In testing this very issue I set the journal size to both a 4 meg size [-J size=4] and 16 meg size. Both times after completeing a stage1 install I got the message about a bad superblock not describing an ext3 file system. I further tested this using a stage2 and stage3 install and got the same error.

Test useflags included march=athlon-xp -Os -pipe, -O2 -pipe, -O3 -pipe and -O -g pipe. Right now I've developed a work around to the problem that works and it's pretty simple. Don't use [-J size=x] for the /root partition. The default journal works fine and on anything other then /boot you can safely increase the journal size without problems.

A secondary option is to not use the ext3 file system for /root but I have no idea as to what difficulties that adds.