Bug 12692

Summary: Please package exfatprogs
Product: IPFire Reporter: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer>
Component: ---Assignee: Adolf Belka <adolf.belka>
Status: CLOSED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: - Unknown -    
Priority: - Unknown - CC: peter.mueller
Version: 2   
Hardware: unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   

Description Michael Tremer 2021-09-07 11:21:01 UTC
Please package this for IPFire 2:

> https://github.com/relan/exfat

I believe this does *not* replace dosfstools, but if it does, please drop that so that we do not have redundant functionality.
Comment 1 Adolf Belka 2021-09-07 11:33:20 UTC
(In reply to Michael Tremer from comment #0)
> Please package this for IPFire 2:
> 
> > https://github.com/relan/exfat
> 

Will do so.


> I believe this does *not* replace dosfstools, but if it does, please drop
> that so that we do not have redundant functionality.

It does not replace dosfstools and your question made me find out that our current version is from 2013 and there is a current version from Jan 2021 so I will also do an update to dosfstools
Comment 2 Adolf Belka 2021-09-07 12:55:42 UTC
I noticed that exfat-utils stopped having any updates in 2018 and searching around I found that exfat was added as a native driver into the kernel in 5.7 and exfatprogs has been worked on since then to provide the equivalent utilities as exfat-utils.

I had been using exfat-utils with my arch linux systems so I replaced it with exfatprogs and removed all fuse related packages and when I inserted an exfat usb stick the exfat module was loaded into the kernel and I was able to access the stick and the files on it. Fedora is also using the kernel exfat driver

Looking at IPFire currently the x86_64,armv6l and aarch64 architectures have the exfat module commented out so it can't be loaded.
In the i586 architecture the module is set to CONFIG_EXFAT_FS=m so it can be loaded


So my question is do we want to stay with the fuse driver together with exfat-utils or move to the native kernel driver with exfatprogs?
Comment 3 Michael Tremer 2021-09-07 14:07:27 UTC
(In reply to Adolf Belka from comment #1)
> It does not replace dosfstools and your question made me find out that our
> current version is from 2013 and there is a current version from Jan 2021 so
> I will also do an update to dosfstools

Okay. We should have a separate ticket for this.
Comment 4 Michael Tremer 2021-09-07 14:09:11 UTC
(In reply to Adolf Belka from comment #2)
> I noticed that exfat-utils stopped having any updates in 2018 and searching
> around I found that exfat was added as a native driver into the kernel in
> 5.7 and exfatprogs has been worked on since then to provide the equivalent
> utilities as exfat-utils.

My bad. I used Google and then landed on that package which is part of archlinux. So is the alternative that you proposed. Let's go with the mainstream and maintained version then.

> I had been using exfat-utils with my arch linux systems so I replaced it
> with exfatprogs and removed all fuse related packages and when I inserted an
> exfat usb stick the exfat module was loaded into the kernel and I was able
> to access the stick and the files on it. Fedora is also using the kernel
> exfat driver

Yeah, we don't need fuse here. We want to use the new kernel driver. We only need tools to perform fsck and format it too and so on.
 
> Looking at IPFire currently the x86_64,armv6l and aarch64 architectures have
> the exfat module commented out so it can't be loaded.
> In the i586 architecture the module is set to CONFIG_EXFAT_FS=m so it can be
> loaded

I have a patch ready for this. Don't worry :)

> So my question is do we want to stay with the fuse driver together with
> exfat-utils or move to the native kernel driver with exfatprogs?

No, we want the native kernel driver and extfatprogs.

Thank you for being more awake than I was :)
Comment 5 Adolf Belka 2021-09-09 12:00:43 UTC
Patch for installation of exfatprogs has been submitted to patchwork.

The changes to enable the exfat module in the kernel need to be applied for this to be usable.

https://patchwork.ipfire.org/project/ipfire/patch/20210909115330.3468094-1-adolf.belka@ipfire.org/
Comment 6 Adolf Belka 2021-10-22 21:35:12 UTC
Patch has been committed into next (Core Update 161)

https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=commit;h=574690dc0015447b5db788ab08190790e0c22d7b
Comment 7 Adolf Belka 2021-11-02 15:33:45 UTC
Patch has been released for testing in Core Update 161

https://blog.ipfire.org/post/ipfire-2-27-core-update-161-available-for-testing