[Parted-maintainers] Bug#1103454: libparted detects ext4 without journal as ext2

[Pascal Hambourg]

On 17/04/2025 at 21:51, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 09:09:47PM +0200, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>
> libparted wrongly detects ext4 without journal as ext2 instead of ext4.
(...)
> This bug affects the debian installer partitioning tool, partman, which
> relies on libparted to detect partition filesystem types. partman
> accepts to use such ext4 partition (without formatting it) only as
> ext2, then tries and fails to mount it as ext2 because of incompatible
> features.

Note: this is not a theoretical bug, it was reported by an affected D-I 
user in #debian-boot IRC channel.

>> please have a look at the attached trivial patch ?
> 
> If upstream accept it then I'd be willing to cherry-pick it, but I'm not 
> competent to review this without a fair bit of research that I don't 
> really have time for.  Please send it upstream first.

Upstream reviewed the patch and intends to merge it soon [1] but I guess 
it is already too late for trixie release.

[1] 
<https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/parted-devel/2025-May/005930.html>

A plan B for trixie release is to add a workaround in partman-base to 
double-check the filesystem type with blkid or other available tool when 
the filesystem detected by parted_server is ext2.

D-I team: what is your opinion about plan B wrt bug severity and release 
timing ?

Parted team: when the fix is merged upstream is it possible to queue it 
for a trixie (and possibly bookworm) point release ?