# Few problems with BSD



## auris (Apr 14, 2009)

Hello,
I am new to FreeBSD(laptop)/PC-BSD(desktop), I was (and still am) using Linux until I fell in love with BSD 
I resolved many things but there are a few which I still can't resolve, here they are:

1) Mounting Ext3/Ext4 filesystems
- Dolphin told me (well Hal told me...) that
org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount /dev/ext2fs/backup: Operation not permitted.
- If I try to mount Ext3 partition with mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/backup /mnt/backup it will do something, but when I ls /mnt/backup I get ls: /mnt/backup: Bad file descriptor.
I have e2fsprogs installed.
- If I try to mount Ext4 partition with mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/data /mnt/data I get "WARNING: mount of ext2fs/data denied due to unsupported optional features"
- Both - FreeBSD 64bit 7.1 (latest) GENERIC and PC-BSD 32bit Galileo (latest) GENERIC
- Dmesg clean

2) Mounting Reiserfs filesystems
- If I try to mount reiserfs filesystem with mount -t reiserfs /dev/ad4s2 /mnt/system I get "Read-only file system" and it won't mount it. I can only mount it read-only with -o ro. I have rfstool installed.
- FreeBSD 64bit 7.1 (latest) GENERIC
- Dmesg is clean

3) Intel wireless 5100 AGN
- I didn't find any useful informations, only that this driver isn't available yet (it is quiet newer card).
- I tried ndisgen for generating the module. It will show me, that INF file appears to be ASCII and SYS file appears to be in Windows PE format - I have no idea what does it mean, but it will generate the module without problem.
Kldload will load it propertly, bud ifconfig won't show me any new interface.
- FreeBSD 64bit 7.1 (latest) GENERIC
- Dmesg is (wellaway) clean

4) Choppy xserver
- This is really the last problem, I promise 
- My Xserver under PC-BSD 32bit (Galileo version) with NVidia drivers is choppy when I am (for example) moving windows.
Nvidia driver version is 180.44. Glxgears will show me about 1700 FPS and sometimes get stucked, if I try to move the window with gears I am glad that the xserver don't fall down. Choppy is also the desktop switching, moving windows, sometimes cursor. It doesn't matter for using Firefox, Pidgin etc. but for more graphical work it is unuseable.
- I tried to change some values in xorg.conf and also tried to change something with sysctl (things that Google told me), but nothing resolved the problem.
- PCBSD 32bit Galileo (latest) GENERIC
- Dmesg is clean

I would be really happy if somebody can help me with these problems. FreeBSD and PC-BSD are great systems, thank you!

Jabber - kenji@dimenze.net
E-mail - kenji@ifrit.eu


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## LateNiteTV (Apr 14, 2009)

im pretty sure you can mount ext3/4 as ext2 if you add 

```
options EXT2FS
```
to  your kernel config.
to mount it use mount_ext2fs.


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## ale (Apr 14, 2009)

Not sure about ext4, but could you try _fsck_ing the partition from linux?
BTW, e2fsprogs is not relevant.
The message seems clear enough.
BTW, rfstools is not relevant.


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## tangram (Apr 15, 2009)

auris said:
			
		

> 1) Mounting Ext3/Ext4 filesystems
> - Dolphin told me (well Hal told me...) that
> org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount /dev/ext2fs/backup: Operation not permitted.
> - If I try to mount Ext3 partition with mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/backup /mnt/backup it will do something, but when I ls /mnt/backup I get ls: /mnt/backup: Bad file descriptor.
> ...



You can go by slice name, e.g.:

```
# mount -v -t ext2fs /dev/ad0s4 /mnt/music
```

To my knowledge ext4 isn't supported yet (someone correct me if I'm wrong).



			
				auris said:
			
		

> 2) Mounting Reiserfs filesystems
> - If I try to mount reiserfs filesystem with mount -t reiserfs /dev/ad4s2 /mnt/system I get "Read-only file system" and it won't mount it. I can only mount it read-only with -o ro. I have rfstool installed.
> - FreeBSD 64bit 7.1 (latest) GENERIC
> - Dmesg is clean



Reiserfs can only be mounted read-only, more info at:
Tip: Mount ReiserFS partitions in FreeBSD



			
				auris said:
			
		

> 4) Choppy xserver
> - This is really the last problem, I promise
> - My Xserver under PC-BSD 32bit (Galileo version) with NVidia drivers is choppy when I am (for example) moving windows.
> Nvidia driver version is 180.44. Glxgears will show me about 1700 FPS and sometimes get stucked, if I try to move the window with gears I am glad that the xserver don't fall down. Choppy is also the desktop switching, moving windows, sometimes cursor. It doesn't matter for using Firefox, Pidgin etc. but for more graphical work it is unuseable.
> ...



You need to be more verbose. Post Xorg log, rc.conf, xorg.conf, etc..


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## phoenix (Apr 15, 2009)

LateNiteTV said:
			
		

> im pretty sure you can mount ext3/4 as ext2 if you add
> 
> ```
> options EXT2FS
> ...



The mount_<fs> commands are deprecated.  Please use *mount -t <fs>* instead.


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## phoenix (Apr 15, 2009)

auris said:
			
		

> 1) Mounting Ext3/Ext4 filesystems
> - Dolphin told me (well Hal told me...) that
> org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount /dev/ext2fs/backup: Operation not permitted.
> - If I try to mount Ext3 partition with mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/backup /mnt/backup it will do something, but when I ls /mnt/backup I get ls: /mnt/backup: Bad file descriptor.
> I have e2fsprogs installed.



FreeBSD can only mount ext2 filesystems that use 128-byte inodes.  If the filesystem uses 256-byte inodes, you will not be able to mount the filesytem.  There are patches floating around to enable support for 256-byte inode ext2 filesystems, but I don't think they've been incorporated into FreeBSD yet.



> - If I try to mount Ext4 partition with mount -t ext2fs /dev/ext2fs/data /mnt/data I get "WARNING: mount of ext2fs/data denied due to unsupported optional features"



FreeBSD can only mount ext2 filesytems.  ext3 can be mounted as ext2, but ext4 cannot.



> 2) Mounting Reiserfs filesystems
> - If I try to mount reiserfs filesystem with mount -t reiserfs /dev/ad4s2 /mnt/system I get "Read-only file system" and it won't mount it. I can only mount it read-only with -o ro. I have rfstool installed.



FreeBSD only supports mounting reiserfs read-only.  There is no write support for reiserfs under FreeBSD.



> 3) Intel wireless 5100 AGN



I only use Atheros wireless chipsets, can't help with this.



> 4) Choppy xserver



I also avoid nvidia graphics chipsets, so can't help with this.


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## Mel_Flynn (Apr 15, 2009)

auris said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 4) Choppy xserver
> - This is really the last problem, I promise
> - My Xserver under PC-BSD 32bit (Galileo version) with NVidia drivers is choppy when I am (for example) moving windows.


Disabling composite fixed this and other related problems for me:

```
Section "Extensions"
    Option         "Composite" "disable"
EndSection
```

If you also experience random hangs (cursor choppy or not moving at all, screen not refreshing), then try switching all sound from pulseaudio to OSS. It can be verified by top, showing pulseaudio in ucond (wait for IO) state, when it should be playing a sound. This apparently blocks everything else.

As usual, I expect KDE to be stable in .5 minor .


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## SirDice (Apr 16, 2009)

auris said:
			
		

> - Dolphin told me (well Hal told me...) that
> org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount /dev/ext2fs/backup: Operation not permitted.



http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/halfaq.html


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## auris (Apr 16, 2009)

Thank you all very much for help!
It's a little bit strange that so huge system like BSD does not fully support another filesystems. Even they are opensource and there are drivers for them in Linux - is it impossible or so difficult to port Linux drivers to BSD?
So problems number 1 and 2 resolved.
I'll try to disable composite and/or switch to OSS.


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## SirDice (Apr 16, 2009)

auris said:
			
		

> Thank you all very much for help!
> It's a little bit strange that so huge system like BSD does not fully support another filesystems. Even they are opensource and there are drivers for them in Linux - is it impossible or so difficult to port Linux drivers to BSD?



It's usually a license issue. Do remember that everything in the base OS must have a BSD or similar license. You simply cannot put GPL'ed code in the base OS.


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## auris (Apr 16, 2009)

I understand - but there can be modules under another license or can't? For example ZFS - I don't supose that ZFS is under the BSD if it cannot be in Linux due to license issues.


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## tangram (Apr 16, 2009)

ReiserFS, ext2, ext3, zfs, fat, ntfs, <insert random filesystem> are all supported. Might not be always be in write mode but there is at least read-only access.

Imho, this is pretty all that's needed until some makes his transition from an Unix-like system to FreeBSD.


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## DutchDaemon (Apr 16, 2009)

ZFS is released under the CDDL (see /usr/src/cddl/contrib/opensolaris/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE). 

Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under other licenses (like BSD), whether open source or proprietary. 

GPL cannot be combined like that.


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## auris (Apr 16, 2009)

Pretty complicated with the licenses - so BSD can be used everywhere, GPL can be used only with another GPL?


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## DutchDaemon (Apr 16, 2009)

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses

Note that these are 'the GPL people', so there's quite some bias in the way they explain licenses.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_source_licenses
etc.


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## auris (Apr 16, 2009)

Seems like GPL's opensource isn't fully about freedom *sadly*


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## Mel_Flynn (Apr 17, 2009)

auris said:
			
		

> Thank you all very much for help!
> It's a little bit strange that so huge system like BSD does not fully support another filesystems. Even they are opensource and there are drivers for them in Linux - is it impossible or so difficult to port Linux drivers to BSD?



Yes. Not just license, but it requires someone funding or someone highly driven to do the work and maintain it. Don't forget that FreeBSD is shipped "working by default", so if no guarantees can be given about foo-fs support corrupting the file system, it will not be enabled.

Under the hood, vfs (the layer abstracting file systems) is quite different, even between BSD's, let alone linux and touches on many kernel subsystems.

It also doesn't help that supporting different filesystems is for corner cases: people migrating to BSD or having an old disk lying around that they'd like to get some files off. FAT being the exception for USB camera's/mp3 players and such,  and this is also where the write support is 99% working (the 1% being some issues with multibyte formatted partitions).


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