vol_id doesn't recognize unjournaled ext4

[Andre Beck <beck@ibh.de>]

Hi,

fooling around with a Debian Sid/Experimental installation on a USB
flash drive, I had some boot issues as /dev/disk/by-{uuid,label} showed
no trace of my boot partition. I've tracked this to vol_id not
recognizing an ext4 block device if the ext4 doesn't have a journal
(a feature that was added to ext4 as an afterthought for the flash
drive use case). The code in ext.c makes pretty clear why that happens,
it will only go into the ext3 branch if there is a journal in the
first place, and will only recognize ext4 as incompatible features
on top of ext3 in that branch.

BTW, util-linux mount(8) apparently has the same issue, as it doesn't
autodetect an unjournaled ext4 and insists on "-t ext4" to mount it.

I'm not on the list, so please keep me Cc'ed on this thread (if any).

Thanks,
Andre.
-- 
-> Andre Beck    +++ ABP-RIPE +++   "Signatures are so last century" <-