Package: debian-installer
Version: 20200314
Severity: wishlist

Now that more and more systems use flash as their main storage, it'd
be really nice if the debian installer would allow creating and using
f2fs for the root partition.

I wasn't sure if this should be reported against debian-installer or
one of the partman-* packages.

Since we now have f2fs support in parted [1], we could
go back to adding partman-f2fs to d-i. It's been quite
a while since I did this, so I'll have to some reading
again. But is anyone even interested to sponsor this
before the freeze? Else, the effort is not really worth
it (for now).

Regards,
Stephan Lachnit

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/parted-team/parted/-/merge_requests/3#note_216035
[2] https://salsa.debian.org/stephanlachnit/partman-f2fs

I would be willing to sponsor this but I'm not sure whether such
a change would be a good idea a little over a week from the soft
freeze.

FWIW, I'm also planning to add support for another filesystem
in debian-installer, namely HFS+. But definitely not before the
freeze.

Adrian

Cool. I've revisited it and I have it working in a Virtual Machine.
Will try a physical ASAP, but I think it's ready for testing.

Regards,
Stephan

Can you sponsor the upload [1] already? This won't add the package
to the installer, but we will decide to have it include in bullseye
(which I really hope), we better upload it ASAP to NEW.

Regards,
Stephan

[1] https://mentors.debian.net/package/partman-f2fs/

Has anyone reviewed the package yet and has there been any input from
other d-i maintainers? I think at least KiBi should give his OK whether
he wants to introduce such a change this late in the release process.

FWIW, someone already tried to upload it without prior coordination
on this mailing list but the upload got rejected because that person
just has DM rights. It's not really okay to make such uploads without
coordination with the d-i team when we're just before the Bullseye
release - although I understand the motivation.

Adrian

Is there any update to this? I can't find the source anywhere to test it
myself either.

Hello,
I don’t use Debian or Debian based distributions, because you don’t support F2FS. Other distribution yes.
Can you please add F2FS file system to the installer?
F2FS is most innovative and high quality file system with optimization with PCs with SSD.
(And for Raspberry Pi with memory cards if F2FS optimized too).
Please don't refuse innovations. Please don’t have mind 20 years in the past.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS
 
If you lazy for development, you can copy and paste code from two debian based distributions which support F2FS in installer:
- SolydXK (Debian based distribution)
- Peppermint OS (Devuan based distribution )
 
F2FS in distro installer is actually supported in Fedora based distributions and in Arch Linux based distributions.
If you will not support F2FS, if you will refuse innovations, competing rivals distributions destroy Debian.

F2FS is high quality file system which use millions Android phones on whole planet earth. It is not any experimental unreliable file system, but F2FS is big project.
F2FS works on Android very dependable and I believe, that equally dependable will works on PCs with SSD.

I read, that F2FS works on HDD the same reliably as on SSD.

First release of F2FS was in year 2012. Now is Year 2025. Debian and Ubuntu hesitate and procrastinate with F2FS innovation 13 years. It is so terrible. Debian and Ubuntu is in delay 13 years.

Matej Marko <ekonom1@atlas.sk> (2025-01-09):

The tone and content of your mails are not appropriate. Please stop.


Cheers,

F2FS was designed for raw nand flash drives, not managed flash as an SSD
is.  It is not tolerant of power failures (so fine on a phone or tablet
that has battery and knows the power state, not so fine on a generic PC).

On a drive with built in management of the flash, as any SSD used in a
PC has, ext4 is a much better choice than F2FS with better performance
and better reliability.

So Debian and Ubuntu have sensibly not bothered to offer the user the
choice to use a filesystem that would be a terrible idea to use in
general.

F2FS works just fine when used in the right place, which is on raw
flash chips on devices with safe power supply.  It does not work well
in other settings.

So what you read is either wrong, or you didn't understand the conditions
that were listed as required to make it reliable.

Am 11. Januar 2025 19:37:27 MEZ schrieb Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>:

F2FS was not designed for HDD nor SSD with sophisticated flash controllers.

F2FS was designed for "dumb" flash drives such as USB sticks, SD/MMC
cards or PCMCIA memory cards. They have a simpler integrated flash
controller than SSD, but they are not "raw flash".

Even when mounting with barrier,fsync_mode=strict ?

But fine on a laptop PC.

I don't know about Ubuntu, but Debian does not target only generic PC
but also a wide range of hardware, including ARM boards which usually
boot from a SD card or USB stick. Even on PC, a portable installation on
USB stick could come in handy. Also udeb packages providing F2FS kernel
module and tools are available for the Debian installer and even
included in installation ISO images, so I assume that adding F2FS
support was considered at some point.

AFAIK F2FS works only on block devices and raw flash memory chips are
managed by the Linux kernel as MTD (memory technology device), not block
devices. Specific flash filesystems such as YAFFS or UBIFS have been
designed for raw MTD.