Why is f2fs blacklisted?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

During installation it was not possible to use f2fs. While there are ways to activate it later there is no way to unblacklist it during install.

NAME   PHY-SEC LOG-SEC RQ-SIZE FSTYPE FSVER FSAVAIL   SIZE START STATE   MODEL                   TRAN   FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sdb        512     512      64                      931,5G       running Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB sata          
└─sdb1     512     512      64 f2fs   1.16   845,5G 931,5G  2048                                            9% /home

Maybe a warning during installation would be enough or is this fs so dangerous that there is no exception?

2

Might start with this article… been published for a while:

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:FilesystemBlacklisting

4 Likes
3

I’m familiar with the article and, of course, I read it beforehand. The question wasn’t how to work around the issue, but rather:

  • Why exactly is f2fs on the index?
  • The other question was, why can’t these file systems be selected during installation, given the limited capabilities of the installer?

It’s important to consider that ntfs3 runs on many systems, while others are mentioned that aren’t even present in the kernel. Interestingly, exFAT, bcachefs, and zfs are neither among the supported file systems nor on the blacklist.
I like f2fs because it has a similar number of features to btrfs, is somewhat faster, is currently under development, and is specifically optimized for SSDs.

4

Quoting from the SDB article linked above:

SUSE chooses the cautious approach and blacklists all modules which are not officially supported.

and again for Tumbleweed:

“SUSE support” doesn’t apply for it, as the kernel is supported by the upstream community. Nevertheless, for consistency, the same blacklisting rules are applied as for SLE and Leap.

basically because, due to the blacklisting above, the relevant kernel modules are missing from the initrd provided by the installer, so the installer doesn’t even “know” of those filesystems.

Maybe it is possible to build a custom installer or simply tweak the initrd by adding the blacklisted modules but that is above my pay grade :wink:

1 Like
5

… and removing /usr/lib/modprobe.d/60-blacklist_fs-f2fs.conffrom the initrd while you are at it.

[sorry, missed the Forum editing window]

6

My thinking was that this article dates back to 2023, so three years ago. Some things never change, but F2Fs is a constantly evolving target. Since its initial release, F2Fs has developed enormously. The same is true for servers using SLE and Leap. The use of SSDs is now much more widespread.
Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS)¶

7

Apparently you miss the point. SUSE (please note, not openSUSE) “does not officially support” it, meaning you cannot have a (paid for) support option for a system using f2fs or other “not supported” filesystems; so if you load that module nevertheless the kernel is “tainted” and in case of trouble SUSE (again not openSUSE) may not help you.
Your reasoning applies to openSUSE (and the upstream kernel), but as stated “for consistency” the default policy remains the same.

1 Like
8

That really worked. During installation I ran modprobe on another terminal and copied the resulting file to /mnt/… because starting from USB. So install is able to adopt existing user-profiles.