Can I disable the huge_file feature without reformatting?

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

I would like to disable the huge file feature on my ext4 partitions. Is there any way I can do this without doing a reformat?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 1:41 pm Post subject:

Shining Arcanine,

Look at man tune2fs see if it has that option.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
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Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

I just googled "tune2fs huge_file" and found:

http://www.nkuttler.de/2009/09/14/filesystem-with-huge-files-cannot-be-mounted-read-write-without-config_lbdaf/

It has instructions on how to do this. Unfortunately, the drives need to be either offline or mounted as read only, so I now need to either get my LiveDVD or figure out how to remount my root drive as read only from inside of Gentoo.

In case anything happens to that blog, here are the commands I used for my /boot/ drive for future reference:

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

A small update. I went to the commandline and ran this procedure. I do not remember the exact steps I took because the first few tries did not work because the root filesystem was mounted read/write. I originally discovered that my ext4 filesystems had huge_file enabled because I disabled CONFIG_LBDAF in the kernel, so I recompiled my kernel without CONFIG_LBDAF and rebooted. My system booted without a problem, which indicates to me that huge_file support has been removed from both of my partitions.

I am now recompiling the kernel with CONFIG_LBDAF so if someone hands me a USB key with huge_file enabled on it, I will be able to write to it.