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IBM releases JFS to GPL
PinAngel writes "IBM has released its JFS source code for Linux to the GPL. You can read more at the IBM website. " JFS is their Journaling File System - you can grab the latest tarball from their Web site.
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I really would love to see Deian and the kernel fully support this. Might be a little better than what we have.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
To those that say "show me the code"... IBM is showing us the code. I think they should be commended for their obvious support of Open Source (free) software.
Anyonw know how good the JFS is? Should we use it?
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Looks like JFS can be ported over to the client, too, now...
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+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
So... what? Does this mean that the JFS will now misreport your disk usage, burrow through your hard drive for nasties and send them to the editor for publication?
What's that? It's not the Journalist File System? Never mind then.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I've seen a lot of stuff go by about journelling file systems and understand the theory/needs. Can someone in the know do a comparison between the various ones out in the marketplace (*nix in general, commercial and other) and how the IBM system stacks up? Is there a review/FAQ available that compares the product in the market niche?
Just to be greedy, can we have LVM too?
I begin to wonder how many journaling file systems we will have in the end, ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS now.
Hey we soon will have more journaling file systems than window managers!
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I wonder which UNIX vendor-contributed FS will make it into distributions first: AIX or XFS.
Can anyone explain differences/advantages/disadvantages of the two filesystems, and perhaps how they compare to some of the other solutions (ReiserFS, ext3)?
New XFMail home page
How many journalling filesystems does linux really need? I realize that after the Microsquish FUD wars, it came to the attention of linux developers that we needed a jfs, but this is rediculous. We need one good jfs, ONE not 4 or 5. While I am happy IBM decided to contribute their hard work to the linux movement, I would rather they contribute developers to make one of the options we currently have as stable and fast as possible. Just my thoughts on the matter though.
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.
A non journaling file system was all that we had going for us with linux.
I'll bet that the file system it frickin complicated now, and I won't be able to edit the inodes by hand with magnets anymore.
Though it's great news that the corporate world is embracing free software, it's important to note that this is a pre-alpha release. It barely reads. About all you can do right now is mkfs, mount/unmount, and ls. So no, I don't think Debian will be intergrating this into their kernel yet. :)
--GnrcMan--
Before half of us go out and snag a copy, realize that this is oh so very pre-alpha! Serious developers only! You can't do anything more than primitive read operations from an existing JFS partition! Granted, they have a marginally functional mkfs, but what good is a filesystem you can't write to?
At lease it is good to see IBM is keeping their promises, and following the credo 'Release early and often'. (In this case, VERY EARLY).
.sig: Now legally binding!
http://www-4.ibm.com/softw are/developer/library/jfs.html
Of course (and despite media rumours) Linux isn't the center of the universe. How does this release under GPL affect the chances of the other open OS's such as FreeBSD adopting this? Is it possible to include something this low level which is GPLed into the core of something licensed under the BSD licence? (I have a nasty feeling I may provoke a license flamewar here...)
Colin Scott
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
After reading these first few comments, I decided that the tone of quite a few of these posters scared me! "Why do we need more journaling file systems?" they said? Don't we already have ReiserFS, ext3, and of course xfs? Don't we already have some? Why can't IBM just put developers to work on a journaling file system we already have?
Well, quite frankly, I LIKE having a choice? Why doesn't everyone that works for RedHat work on making the Debian project better? Hell, why do we have so many editors, vi, vim, emacs, joe, nedit, gnotepad, ed, pico... why do all of those people have to make their own editor? Why can't they just contribute to an editor that already is there?
Er... maybe because it fits a slightly different niche and philosophy? Maybe because IBM's journaling file system handles things a little bit different then ReiserFS, and for certain applications one or the other might be better? I like choices! I like competition! This much diversity is a sign of a healthy enviroment... I say, let them write their own journaling file systems, let's get 10 or 20 more, each a little bit different, each a slight bit more focused to a certain area. Diversity is wonderful, let's nurture it.
this should be good for sharing code/ideas with ext3 fs
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
JFS is the =ONLY= working journalling filing system from a commercial company. XFS would have been the first, but there needs to be more released (and soon) if anyone is to have much confidence in it.
Working does =NOT= mean functional or usable, though, but the development is in TRUE Open Source style, with bug-reporting and a read/write CVS repository for developers.
As for when distributions will use this - I don't expect to see any distribution use ANY of the journalling filing systems this quarter. Next quarter, we MIGHT see ReiserFS. This year, I'd expect to see ReiserFS and Ext3fs.
I'd expect to see JFS added to the next development tree, and therefore introduced into distributions in the next cycle of releases.
XFS might (or might not) come out before the year 3000. As far as kernel patches go, SGI are brilliant. As far as graphics, especially OpenGL, go, SGI is untouchable. As far as filing systems go, a concussed doormouse in a tarpit would move faster.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Go FTP it PDQ, or be SOL.
Just had to keep the TLA's going...
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John 3:16 - God's Public License
It is great that the software has been GPLed, but that only means that me, john doe linux enthusiast, who can rebuild his machine every day for fun can try it out and play with it. GPL software inherently comes without any guarantees. IBM figured that anybody in the business world choosing between two distribs - one with the GPL filesystem and no warranty/support and another from IBM of the exact same software + implicit warranty would buy the IBM product.
Business entities have little incentive to use GPL products while there inhouse IT staff are not linux experts (and this is generally the case). Also, IT system maintenance folks in NT environments "like to get on the phone with the vendor" for most problems and are generally not code-oriented people.
Can your sysadmin code?
Note to Bob Metcalfe and the likes: should the largest computer company in the world be treated as a communist symphatizer now?
Just yesterday we had an article right here on Slashdot talking about a speech Linus gave mentioning the various efforts to bring a journaling file system to Linux. I don't know whether that article may have prompted IBM to put their code up for everyone to have a look or not. It may just be a coincidence. Either way, I tip my hat to them. Thanks, IBM.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
What's going on with the SGI file system that got released s few months ago? Is it better/worse/depends than the IBM stuff? Is anyone working on it?
JFS is a great filesystem. It is probably one of the few great features of AIX. You have to hand it to IBM. They are showing big signs that they truly understand open source. I hope SUN is watching. Granted all this is pre-alpha but it is GPL and the code is out there. Just think next year reiserfs, xfs, ext3, and jfs. Is this the begining of the reunification of UNIX? Matt
Uh, what's wrong with choices? Isn't that part of what all of this is about? Maybe IBM's JFS isn't the fastest, but it has a higher chance of avoiding corruption on a poweroff or crash. Maybe ext3 will be faster, but has other problems. If we have choices, we can choose what is important to our own work, at the current time. Limitting choice is bad, m'kay?
Plus, I'm sure whatever additions/improvements that end up in JFS from open source developers will end up back in AIX's code base. There's no motivation for IBM to take developers off of a solid, reliable, proven project and move them to an experimental open source project where they'll have to reinvent the wheel. Sounds like a waste of everyone's time.
I work in close affiliation with IBM and every indication that I am receiving is that they are totally genuine about their open-source actions. IBM seems to be falling into a model that allows for the greatest customer satisfaction: supporting many diversified products, listening closely to customer demands, and opening up their products to the community. I would like to see more companies follow their example. In the end users will benefit the most!
wow, your computer is set to that time zone that nobody uses! how is the sex with cows?
Actually big name military bases use it. Also many of the ICMB MIRV nuclear launching facilities are located there as well.
Which means that if it has (say) a useful B-tree implementation, that may be usable with things completely unrelated to filesystems.
The question, at this point, is to what degree it is actually usable with Linux.
People may recall that the Mozilla source code "dump" had to take out big chunks, notably including bits of Rogue Wave libraries, RSA crypto code, and some ORB whose name escapes me. As well as (for the UNIX edition) Motif.
Is IBM JFS based on Veritas? If so, then the source code that IBM is free to release doesn't include things at the low level that will be needed. That would parallel the notion of NCC having to strip out Motif support from Mozilla, with the further issue that you can't presently get anything that is quite equivalent to Veritas on Linux.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
A hearty "thank you, way to go" and other compliments to our friends at IBM. BTW, I've heard muted rumblings that DE.. ooops, Compaq is thinking about porting AFS (which, by the way, is killer) to Linux as well. I started thinking "great, more competition, more confusion, it's going to be a while before I know which one to support, at least until one has bumped off most of the..", then it hit me. Competition, in it's best form.
A journalling file system is a really critical need for our favorite Open Source OS to be taken seriously in an enterprise setting. IBM, SGI et. al. want to be able to say "See, we initially wrote your FS, so we can suppport it best!", and get more business that way. I think that's why there are so many competing projects.
This, friends, is where a new market paradigm begins - we will decide which new FS becomes the standard on our machines, based on it's merits, not marketing. Then we end up supporting it, and by default, the company that created it. It's the new currency - knowledge, the ability to use that knowledge, and our collective mind set because of that knowledge. Welcome to the new world.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Forgive me for being EE instead of CS, but how does a journaling file system differ from a regular file system? Why should I use it?
GollyGee Blocks -- 3D creativity software for kids.
When I go to get ice cream, I want ice cream. Just give me ice cream. I don't need some whiny slacker bugging me about what flavor, what cone, and how many scoops. It's an ice cream place, dammit: bring me ice cream! I shouldn't even have to ask for it. I should be able to just gesture at a picture and grunt.
Are you talking about the Andrew File System?
If you are it's not from Compaq it's from Transarc (now owned by IBM) and was originally developed by Carngie Mellon University. There's already a beta of AFS for Linux and there should be an official version "real soon now". There's also a free AFS client implementation called Arla.
Also, AFS is a different sort of beast. It's a distributed filesystem (dfs). CMU's latest dfs -- CODA -- is based on AFS2 and a linux port is available.
SeanI spoke too soon. SGI have released another XFS tarball, bringing their code (according to them) up to 50% of completion. So, just one more year to go, before they're at the same point IBM are now.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I felt like I should support them, and given the choice between a marginally more expensive IBM and a relatively similar Compaq, I chose IBM.
. . . and so far, I've even been pleased with the laptop!
You wait all year for a journalling filesystem and then three come at once.
I'm always overly critical of IBM. Mostly because I work at said company. In the past, I've said I wouldn't beleive IBM was really doing anything positive in the Linux/GNU/OS/FS community until I saw it. I guess I have to admit that IBM is actualy contributing and seems to be doing the Right Thing with some of their products.
... I'm still pessimistic. I don't trust IBM, I can never forgive them for the death of my son. Wait ... er, I still think IBM is only looking for a way to upset MS and isn't really interested in playing nicely. Once MS is gone, I hope IBM's true colors turn out to be honest involvement and that IBM doesn't turn back into a schoolyard bully for the IT world.
;)
But
Mod this down since it's mostly me bitching.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
In short, it is very cool. It is much better that the crap Sun gives us by default, and while I don't know much about SGI's XFS, my impression of SGI's has generally been that they suck and are slow.
Time to buy some IBM stock (anyone taking bets on whether IBM swallows redhat?)
-- Slashdot sucks.
Note that JFS isn't complete yet. The README says that hard and soft links do not work, you can't *write* to a JFS filesystem, reading is still in progress and it will only work on the Intel architecture due to endian problems. If you want to use a journeling file system now you should probably try ext3
I'm running 2.2.15pre5 right now.. and the JFS breaks NFS.. it gets a conflicting types for 'buffermem'... DOH!
Since I'm a perl hacker, and not a c hacker... this is not quite an easy fix for me..
anyone out there got a fix... (besides turning off NFS)
ChiefArcher
take a look at this for a example
It's a patch to 2.2.12
/src/linux-2.2.12/fs/jfs
Or in other words, I could have jfs support in
2.2.12 RIGHT NOW!
But here is the real FULL MEAL DEAL
take a look at this wonderful little app that is included in the patch!
/src/linux-2.2.12/fs/jfs/utils/mkfs$ ls
initmap.c initmap.o inodemap.h inodes.c inodes.o makefile mkfs.o
initmap.h inodemap.c inodemap.o inodes.h make.jfs mkfs.c
They include a make.jfs!
I could have JFS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
Amazing!
Or in other words IBM is more then Just talking about open source.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
It talks about different OS interfaces, and has a very thorough section on filesystems available under linux, including several other JFS's...
-Chris
Linux has never looked so good Click Here for further details
What did IBM do?
Your argument is heard often, which is really scary, because it is based on the false premise of infinite developer ressources.
Think about the situation before Qt/KDE and Gtk/Gnome, where we had a dozen different GUI toolkits, all of which sucked badly, and none of which had a momentum significantly larger than the other. An application writer would have to choose one of them, and send fixes and enhancement to one that alone, helping perhaps 5% of the other application writers in the process. Today, he can one of the two main toolkits/environments, and his fixes and enhancements will help maybe 45% of the other application writers.
Of course, some choices can be justified because they provide compatibility, for example LessTif, GnuSTEP and winelib, and there should always be room for research-like projects. What is needed is one or two choices that are clearly "mainstream", and thus can be used for focusing developer energy.
For journaling file systems, the situation isn't all bad. XFS, JFS and Ext3 are all clearly needed in order to support interoperability with SGI, IBM and Ext2 systems. And ReiserFS has some very interesting application for file system based databases, which I'm really hoping will turn out good.
What *is* interesting though, and very promising is that they've chosen to release it under the GPL. Of course under any other licence it would have been useless since it's kernel-level and the kernel *is* GPL. But it's a nice move away from the YAL (Yet Another Licence) syndrome that's been plagueing the first careful steps towards Open Source... wanting to reap benefit of the new paradigm, but not really daring to let go.
Hopefully more will follow in this direction.
-- Eythain
I believe Veritas just annouced full support for thier backup software and other product on linux to be coming out very soon.
it might be included optionally. the BSDs could distribute a GPLed jfs as an add-on like they do now (as in the ports directory). however, because of the license issues, i seriously doubt it could ever be the default fs.
Of course we all know the reason why IBM is porting JFS to Linux. Remember a little while back IBM stated that they are planning on supporting Linux on all of there hardware, well if you want people to switch there RS/6000's from AIX to Linux you had damn well better be able to read filesystems that AIX wrote. Now the big question is will IBM also port there Logical Volume Manager to Linux? Also will there be a port of SMIT(ibm's system management tool, which btw is very nice).
I know I'd be using JFS and there LVM on any mission critical system I had...
While IBM really open-sources a JFS for Linux (or for whatever it may be ported-to in the future), Sun sort of open-sources NFS.
If Sun isn't careful: IBM will replace them as the computer company with the most cool. Perhaps it's too late already.
I wonder: do you suppose slashdot defaults to "flat" mode lately to improve its hit count?
From what I've read, JFS for AIX is insanely scalable and a good performer on the high-end. IBM also ported their JFS to OS/2 Warp, and made some adjustments to have it perform very well on lower end systems (and non servers) as well.
To me, these sound like the ingredients needed for a main Linux FS (good on high and low end). Of course, JFS is NOT designed for small file systems (a la floppy disks, misc. removables), so it couldn't replace everything.
This is great news.
But, with several alternatives it would be nice to see a full analysis done of each of them, and an ongoing tracker of the current state of each. This would be a great article for Linux World, or one of the other Linux peridicals.
Apparently they are. Check this article, Sun releases NFS as open source , or this one, Sun loosens its grip on NFS . Alas, it looks like it's going to be released under YAWSL (Yet Another Wacky Sun License), but it's apparently only for the Transport Independent Remote Procedure Call (TI-RPC) protocol.
JimD
JFS : Mostly working, from the sounds of it.
How's that again?
The JFS README file lists the following TODO items left to go:
JFS TODO list:
- JFS:
- make READ fully operational
- READ file
- get write capabilities operational
- MKDIR
- CREATE file
- WRITE file
- RMDIR
- RM
- add support for hard and soft links, special files
That's a pretty broad definition of "mostly working." It does sound exciting, but I'm going to have to withhold judgement until file reading, writing, creation and removal have been made operational.
Just like anything else in the world from Heisenberg on up, there are tradeoffs. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too.
You want speed, you dump journalling or file systems alltogether and do raw, direct disk access. That is the fastest way to get data onto and off of the disk. It has the highest bandwidth both sustained and burst. It has the highest data density. It also is the least flexible and most prone to error.
You want reliability, and/or flexibility, you start taking care how, when, where you put your data, whether or not you do copies, add error correction codes, etc. All of this takes time, which negates speed.
Some people want speed at all cost.
Some people want reliability at all cost.
Some people are somewhere in between.
No one system is going to satisfy all of them.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You are right about the fact there are finite Developer resources. Which is why you can never have too many choices.
Journaling file systems are in their infance for the linux kernel. So we need to explore as many possibilities as possible. And because there are only finite developer resources, only the best ones will survive. It's called survival of the fitest and thats how the open source movement works.
After all just think if there were only one journaling filesystem. Ever heard of the saying "too many cooks spoil the broth" ? So you have lots of people with different philosophies working on this single choice that you have. The results can only be horrifying. Just look at the BSD projects for an example. They have a great product, and they started with a single code base, but philosophical goals differed and eventually they evloved into many different varients. After much bad feelings is what I get from various conversations that I have followed on mailing lists and news groups.
This is the reason that you have very few people working on the linux kernel itself, and only one who decides what goes in. His philosophy decides where the linux kernel goes. If you don't like this, work on something else. Like the hurd. Eventually the better/more practical philosophy will win. And there dosen't have to be a single winner even. Many can win. And although people will flame me for this, the opensource philosophy has already proven to be the better and more praticle way of developing the support infrastructure software. And it's winning. And there are many winners. Like GPL, lGPL, BSD, artistic, NPL etc. Even in these, the better ones will survive, and others will evolve to take on the good things from their betters.
Besides, with all these codebases released under GPL/compatible licenses, you have the option of borrowing from each other to make a better product. And you have something to compare your product with. After all how would you know that there isn't a better way of doing things, if they were always done only one way and you've never even seen/thought about another?
So you see variaty is the mother of evolution. Choice is good and let the best man win.
Sure, I'll take odds against you on that one. Red Hat does not own much in the way of proprietary technology. It does have a lot of developers, but IBM has more. Sure it would generate a lot of buzz, but most of it would probably be negative in the Linux community, and Wall Street would ask whether Red Hat's really worth the money.
Buying Red Hat is the way Microsoft deals with competition in a closed-source world. IBM can do everything Red Hat does in-house, and a whole lot more.
-cwk.
Repost CNN Entertainment
Thank you.
First, as someone who manages a large SP system and has run IBM workstations ever since the 320s came out, yes JFS is the business and yes, it would be really nice if IBM released the Logical Volume Manager too.
I think this is a smart and encouraging long-term move by IBM. The real money gets spent not on hardware or software but on support. IBM (and SGI) must reckon that Free Software is here to stay and if they are to make money they must be leaders in it.
Individuals and Universities are likely to use Free Software without commercial support. Companies will it some of the time but not for critical systems. By being leaders in Linux IBM will do little to harm their core sales to people who wouldn't use it anyway but will make their products the logical progression for people moving away from Linux. And maybe open up a profitable Linux support division too.
In this area GPL scores over BSD licensing because companies can release their source code without the fear that a competitor will use it in their propriety closed OS.
The good news is that all this appeals to one of the most powerful force on earth, that dubious thing called enlightened self-interest. Whilst pure altruism, from Stallman and Torvalds all the way down to any of us who have ever submitted a bug-fix to Free Software, is essential it will not change the world on its own. The combination of the two just might.
John
They say they need to "add endian support for non-Intel platforms". I find this puzzling, since JFS runs on RS/6000s using 64-bit big-endian cpu's (Power3's, I believe). I presume they are referring to the Alpha and some varieties of Sparc, but aren't these also 64-bit big-endian processors?
If it supports volumes under Linux, that'd be INCREDIBLE. For those that do not know: under AIX you can join arbitrary devices into a volume (which is a managerial unit wrt quotas and such). Kinda like loop devices, or RAID (md) under Linux -- but at a higher level; you can do cool things like remove a device from a volume and then add another device to the volume w/o doing any data juggling.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Gleaned from http://www-4.ibm.com/softw are/developer/library/jfs.html: JFS only logs operations on meta-data, for data consistency consider using syncronous I/O.
That having been said, JFS is about as bullet-proof of a filesystem as I have ever used. This is a good thing.
We linux users send millions of emails asking companies to release their products for free. And when they do? We don't even make the effort to use them in our distributions! There have been several excellent file systems released lately that beat the shit out of what linux currently has. Are we waiting for IBM to integrate it into linux for us or what?!?!
"Might be a little better than what we have"
Er YEAH, try an OS with a real file system someday and you won't believe what you're missing! Imagine being able to instantly search your entire HD for a file. Or adding attributes to your files that allow you to perform complex searches. And no more defrag/scandisk/fdisk/ and all that other filth, instant reboots.
It is indeed time to buy IBM stock; it has been incredibly undervalued since the beginning of 4Q '99, after they 'fessed up that business would be slow for the next 6 months due to Y2K slowdowns in customer orders (stock price dropped from 130's to 90). As an IBMer who gets shares at a (small!) discount, I am thrilled to get more shares for the buck during this lull. beamin (don't have my pw handy)
Ballpark estimates, for entertainment purposes only. No wagering, please.
These filesystems are not as simple to interface in as the "Amiga filesystem" or other such stuff, as these FSes have expectations to be able to control somewhat how the kernel manages caches. They're not merely "drop in a patch and all will be well."
As a result, while I agree that it's good to have some diversity now to allow some experimentation, I am far less sure that it will be wise to have four (or more, if rumors of Compaq contribution of AdvFS code turn out to be true...) filesystems integrated in to the "official" kernel stream. There may be merit to having a couple of them, but not likely all of them.
So while I agree that it's quite OK for there to be 5 of them (and that ignores GFS, NTFS, and other stranger options that may be of less direct relevance), I think that there will be, ultimately, a need for several of the "integration projects" to fail.
Otherwise, Linus and others won't have time to fix up NFS3, improve memory management, implement ACLs, implement capabilities, implement IA-64 support, and all the other sorts of things that need to occupy some of their time.
The GUI comparison was pretty good; I agree with Per that it is a Good Thing that we have GNOME and KDE, as this is sufficient diversity to ensure that there is some competition whilst not being so much as to be completely fragmenting. It is unfortunate that this leaves some potentially good toolkits like FLTK or Tk or Amulet or Garnet or InterViews "out in the cold."
The point is that variety is useful at the point in time at which you're not sure what the results should look like.
But after that point, variety comes at the cost of having to support additional "development streams," and while there is logic to "letting the best man win," this has the side effect that if you agree with this, you have to also agree with the notion that the "not quite best men" need to be able to lose.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
just install it with ports -- you can do that. sure it won't be default (and incur minimal hassle on your part) but come on, it can't be that big of a hassle -- better than converting, at least.
SMIT would be nice but as I recall, it is based on the ODM stuff IBM wrote. Object Data Manager (or something like that) tries to put an object layer on the otherwise file-oriented /etc/ stuff.
So, be careful what you wish for.
For my money, I'd rather see linuxconf cleaned up and made more stable. I think it has more potential anyway.
I administer many RS/6000s (S70s, H70s, S7a, etc.), several of them clustered. As a matter of fact, I've never been able to boot one to just the operating system in under 20 minutes.
Most of the time, the IPL takes 35 minutes to an hour for the S7*s. Even with a fast IPL (which can no longer be done by software but requires touching the box (are you listening IBM?)), I'm gazing upon least 25 minutes.
My Sun Enterprise servers can be booted in under six minutes. Every time.
That said, I'd take AIX over any other operating system on the planet for a high-end server. Linux is great for unclustered single-service-per-box applications or many light services on a single box but, for 'real' work, AIX on RS/6000 is the way to go.
As for AIX's JFS, it is amazing. Seven years, several disasters and not a single bit lost. Coupled with AIX's logical volume manager (LVM) and SMIT, well, there just isn't a better place to be.
Init 'I Ain't Paid By IBM But I Would Carry Their Child' Zero
I think I'm going to pour a hot bowl of JFS source code down the front of my pants.
I have looked at the proposed Linux LVM and, coming from OS/2, it does seem overly complicated and hard to use. The proposed Linux LVM requires the creation of a Volume Group before you can make a Logical Volume. The Logical Volume must reside in the Volume Group. If you expand a Logical Volume, it can only be expanded using disk space from the Volume Group that it belongs to. If the Volume Group has no free space, then the Volume Group must be expanded first. etc. etc. The underlying model seems overly complex, unless I am missing something ( a distinct possibility given that I an new to Linux). The OS/2 model, by comparison, is rather simple. You have partitions and volumes. Volumes are what shows up to the world (i.e. - gets a drive letter), and a Volume is defined to be one or more partitions. If you want to expand a volume, you can use any partition that is not part of a volume, or you can use any block of free space on any hard drive in the system ( the LVM will automatically create the partition ). It seems to me to be a much simpler and easier model to use.
Doesn't Slowaris have a pretty well respected JFS as well? And I believe you can even get the source, sort of. You don't own it, but you can modify it. Has anyone used both?
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Veritas already has an RedHat 6.0 client for Netbackup. We use it everyday to backup a little internet web/e-mail/ftp server wiht RedHat 6.0 and it works very well. We did not have any kind of errors for more then 4 months now.
IBM's LVM already has some weird license attached. It's the same lvm that HP and some other unices use. For now, you could still use lvm for linux. Works very well for me. Hasn't got all the features of AIX LVM, but it works.
I've heard a lot of respect for the solidness of IBM's JFS. I've also heard a lot of respect for the performance of ReiserFS. Once both of these are available with source code, will we be able to put their functionality together to get the best of both worlds, or does the way that they do things exclude each other?
I believe that the overabundance of choices that you describe is a result of a growing need for an application or service that hasn't been completely realized yet. Since the various different programs aren't sufficiently developed to suit everyone's needs, many developers feel that they can create their own to suit their particular needs more easily than modifying someone else's. However, sometimes one program does actually provide a basis for a new, completely unrelated program.
Once a developer or team advances their program sufficiently for other projects (with similar needs) to notice how cool it is, these other lesser projects tend to be abandoned into obscurity. I think this is pretty much the case with GTK and QT for example. We don't see a lot of new widget sets coming out anymore.
Obviously once we get a few really good journaling file systems, they'll stop coming in abundance. We might expect to see ports of file systems from existing platforms (which would be productive), and the natural evolution of the current native filesystem into a journaling file system (which would also be productive). Perhaps a high-performance fs inteded to compete with the native fs wouldn't be out of the question.
I agree that too many independent projects would be uncalled for, but not likely to happen.
yep. and group partitions together to form "domains". this should be implemented into linux at some time. it's just too handy.
:-))
how hard is it to trash... don't really know. never intended to try it.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
Hah. That's nothing. Wait'll you have to create a volume group, THEN a logical volume, THEN a physical volume, THEN a filesystem, and THEN format the f'in f'er.
I've done it countless times, in SMIT, SAM, and commandline flavors for both.. As well as Veritas VxFS... It's not so hard once you get the picture conceptually, and that's something you can say about pretty much any unix thing as long as you've got more than hot air 'tween the ears...
The _big_ problem I have is in terminology mangling.. Logical Volume is to Plex as Physical Partition is to....
And I'd really be interested in learning XFS for the QoS bits alone.. How's _that_ coming along?
Your Working Boy,
IBM is just doing this until microsoft dies off. Then they will leave your little open source hiny blowin' in the wind, just like the English left their Indian allies after the French and Indian war.
I remember there was a time when IBM was in need of an operating system for there first pc.. . Microsoft DOS was made into a huge suscess by IBM (IBM didn't care about ownership at the time thinking "There's no money in this 'Software' stuff.. . Computers are run on Hardware and Hardware is what sells" and IBM will do the same for Linux; Now It seems That IBM is likeing the idea of a free os. Focusing back on Hardware and reliseing that computers with the best hardware, not software will sell since all computers will have the option of running the same os free of cost. IBM has always been involved in UNIX based operating systems, and I think that they can and will contribute alot to the Linux comunity and Really make Linux mainstream.
Spoken like a true Unix bigot! Unfortunately you missed the boat, just like Unix has for the last 20 years or more. For Linux to become the OS of choice, it must:
1) Look Good (you sell the sizzle, not the steak! Just ask Bill Gates - he's a master at it!)
2) Perform well (Linux already does)
3) MUST BE EASY TO USE!!!! (Linux is steadily improving, but it has a long way to go)
All of the people using this web site have at least some technical experience. They can figure out how to do things like use the AIX LVM. However, spend some time dealing with real customers (users) and you find that most of them are clueless! We've all heard the stories about the woman who thought the mouse was a foot pedal, or the guy who thought the cd-rom drive was a fancy cup holder. Unfortunately, these stories are real. Just ask anyone who works in tech support at Dell, IBM, Compaq, etc. These are the type of everyday people who are using computers. A computer is just another tool to them. They just want to use the machine to get their work done, and the less they have to know about operating the computer the better. Any system that requires extensive training to use will never fly with the average computer user today. This is why I don't want an AIX/Unix style LVM put into Linux. The OS/2 LVM is a major improvement over the AIX/Unix style LVM. It uses a simpler model that is easier for the average user to understand. However, it still needs a better user interface! I think the OS/2 LVM is a better starting point than the AIX/Unix style LVM, but it is just that, a starting point. I would like to see Linux become the OS of choice, but that will never happen if the common user can't use it effectively with minimal training.
Reportedly there are other UNIX vendors integrating it, likely including SCO and HP.
I was apparently wrong about there being a JFS dependancy on Veritas FS; there is, in any case, zero relevancy in this thread to their backup software.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I am posting a question here, and I hope my question will not attract too much flames.
Is it better to integrate this JFS into the kernel or is it better to let the distros integrate it?
Linux is in the late 2.3 cycle, is there enough time left to integrate IBM's JFS into the kernel at this late juncture?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The JFS in AIX is rock solid. I used to work in a hardware lab where we tortured hardware, used to knock AIX to its death many, many, many times a day and the system alwasy booted up. Never lost data. The IBM's AIX JFS dates back to '91. Very mature.
Who is gonna be first with a good JFS distro (I say SGI)!!
Now all we need is IBM's LVM from AIX.
Go IBM.
MicroBob
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
if(COND);{ is_wrong }
f s.c m p.c o .c
if(A&B==C) is usually wrong - See K&R.
C:\tmp\linux-2.2.12\fs\jfs\ref\jfs_dasdlim.c
else if (ip && (ip->i_mode & IFMT != IFDIR))
C:\tmp\linux-2.2.12\fs\jfs\ref\jfs_rawio.c
assert (FreeDummyInodes= (inode_t*)xmalloc(sizeof(inode_t),
C:\tmp\linux-2.2.12\fs\jfs\ref_utils\format\xmk
if ( rc != 0 );
{
C:\tmp\linux-2.2.12\fs\jfs\ref_utils\libfs\log_du
(sb.s_flag & JFS_INLINELOG == JFS_INLINELOG ))
C:\tmp\linux-2.2.12\fs\jfs\ref_utils\libfs\logred
(sb.s_flag & JFS_INLINELOG ==JFS_INLINELOG ))
C:\tmp\linux-2.2.12\fs\jfs\utils\mkfs\mkfs.c
if ( rc != 0 );
{
- Mohsin http://www.cs.albany.edu/~mosh
File system support is a very touchy area for most, but few see the real potential, and why we need so many file systems supported in Linux.
Just think if you had a box in the office, that if any one of your big iron machines (IBM, SGI, Compaq, etc) decided to up and fail, you could just plug the drive into, and get at your data immediately to get things done. Granted it might not be as fast as the traditional system that you use for every day operations, but this is an "emergency backup". You live with reduced performance instead of no performance at all.
I can see Linux becoming that box. That all purpose box of tricks that a System Administrator can use to his disposal. It's already there in the network doing just that job, and gaining ground. There is a lot more this little system can do that even the big irons can't compete with. And if we want Linux to be the best... *grin*
As for kernel support, all that the many systems will do is provide a very decent API system for passing data to/from the kernel for these Journalling/High Performance systems. Sure everyone does the final product differently, but if the kernel can output a generic, yet fast method for all the file systems to use, then we gain some instant advantages. Firstly we can run all these systems, which is a must, but secondly it opens up an interface that can be exploited by a newly developed system to the max, giving us the best performance possible.
This is not going to be easy, and as people improve their programming techniques and new people get into the kernel code, there is bound to be new revisions, and mebbe even total rewrites. Just look at the networking code. Major revamps by dedicated people have produced now a significantly faster network layer. True a lot of it got re-written, but that is the price you pay for progress.
So instead of bitching about it, lets just let them get on with the job of doing it, and where possible help out. When they make mistakes, don't abuse, just give them a prod in the right direction.
--- Every decision is right, it's just a matter of whose right we are refering to.
I hope I'm not just stating whats been said already, because obviously, any vender, let alone IBM, releasing something for linux, and under the GPL! is good. However, this has more benefits then what immediately meets the eye.
:-) even that is technically a mid-level server).
Linux has become a powerful and economical choice for a entry to midlevel server. However, you will find very few interested in using Linux for large scale, mission critical file serving when there are so many proprietary, Sun Servers, HP, IBM, Compaq Tru64... high end unix-based servers that have tried and true journaling file systems. With a GPLed journaling file system, Linux can begin to take notice from those who might have used proprietary systems. Which also hopefully will encourage other developments previously found only on such high end and proprietary servers (hot swappable NICS comes to mind, tho I think this may be more of a hardware feature then anything, I dunno, I've never tried putting linux on the compaq proliant at work, if only they'd let me
Anyway, for all of those who say, oh wow, journaling filing, i want that on my slashdot-viewing box. You don't really need it. A journaling file system is a complex and processor demanding file system. Linux runs faster with plain old EXT2, despite its shortcomings. But for server applications, transaction journaling is the only way to go.
On a side note, does anyone know the status of XFS (another journaling file system) taking EXT2s place? I heard that that was a possibility. However, to me its unecessary to implement a full fledged journaling system (IBM or SGI) unless you really need it. But thats just my take on it.
At any rate, thanks to IBM for supporting open source.
Spyky
In fact, more generally, I'd be really hard pressed to think of anything I would want in Linux from AIX (maybe the Fortran 90 compiler).
When it comes to systems like Irix, AIX, JFS, etc., you have to realize that a lot of smart people have worked on them for a long time. Some people may view that as an advantage. I don't. The motivation of those engineers was to be able to point to new features they implemented when their performance review came up every year, to do well on benchmarks, and maybe to write some papers for technical conferences. Leaving "good enough" alone was definitely not in their interest.
And those engineers were backed by big software development organizations that debugged and tested that code for every release, and by big consulting and field support engineers that helped customers configure the zillions of options that those systems had, most of which hardly anybody ever needed.
Linux keeps things simple. It gets good performance using comparatively straightforward code. That's a big win in my book, and I think it's the reason why so many people prefer Linux to proprietary systems. Let's not spoil that advantage by incorporating all those dusty decks from IBM, SGI, and other big companies that fit neither with the Linux code development infrastructure nor with the end user support infrastructure. The only party that benefits if Linux gets overly complex is companies that sell support.
JFS is not being ported directly from AIX.
Linux is getting the OS/2 version. I saw
support for Unicode, DOS file attributes,
and a crazy 8.3 filename flag. There is a
creation time stamp. (which ctime is NOT)
This supports huge files. (64-bit sizes)
Inodes take 4x the space of ext2 inodes.
(they are 512 bytes) B-trees are used for
file block allocation at least, maybe more.
Files have ACL data and EA data.
This is real Linux kernel code, but large
unported parts are left commented out.
Linux 2.2.xx kernels can use this code to
read the root directory of a JFS filesystem.
You can't access any other directories yet,
and you can't access regular files either.
Thanks IBM, you give us all faith that large mega-corps arent all complete bastards :)
;)
Sincerely, this is a gesture that alot of us appreciate immensely, and one which Im sure all Linux users will appreciate later when it is all stabilised and integrated into the kernel
Hats off to IBM, a company that obviously has good people, good intentions and a clue
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
I thought the redbook or whatever, security and all that mandates you have a solid file system with journalling, plus on 390, the journalling systems is so smart, IMHO next to impossible hide tampering. obviously ms's C2 - beats me how they got it when NTFS needed upgrading for 2K
Still, hopefully IBM will continue its commitment to open source things, unlike some companies... *cough*sun*cough*.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'm talking about the AIX version of JFS. You manipulate them with aclput/aclget/acledit
This is an informative but short post, gimme Karma now !
SMIT is also going, well, the graphical version is and being replaced by the evil that is WSM, or whatever they have decided to call it. However the good news is SMITTY is staying for the time being and the even better news is that the ODM is almost certainly going come Monteray/AIX version 5, or whatever they finally decide to call it!!
What I think is Überc00l is that IBM actually releases this under the GPL, not some bullshit IBM-Artistic license. It looks like they really have understanding and confidence to how GPL works, or else they would have invented their own silly license. This is a good thing, since it's much easier to relate to one type of license, GPL or LGPL. It will also help IBM leveraging their Open Source efforts by getting more help from people who want to test and develop. The GPL ensures that all changes must be released with full sourcecode available, preventing unnecessary code-forks.
Of course you can argue that GPL have more restrictions than the BSD license. But it's a necessary evil to educate certain people about the benefits of sharing. Borrowing and extending ideas are fundamental to development,
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
How immediate would be to compile a good quality IFS of JFS to work with a normal OS/2 Warp 4 (not Aurora or WSEB)?
I mean, how complete is the code provided compared to the OS/2 one provided with OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business?
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
But that wasn't my concern.
My concern was, and is, that it is likely to be prohibitively difficult to get all of these filesystems integrated all at once into the official kernel stream.
They all have somewhat differing expectations as to the interfaces used to get at such things as disk cache. This should not be a big surprise; they were designed independently, and thus have differing ideas as to how to interface with the kernel.
The problem is that since they simultaneously require:
- Quite tight integration, so that they can provide robustness and performance guarantees, and
- Somewhat differing approaches to connecting to the rest of the kernel,
this will make the integration of all of them at once a daunting task to Linus/Alan/Stephen.Note that namespace issues have already come up; ReiserFS and EXT2 had clashes due to trying to define functions by the same names. Other similar things are likely to happen.
The point is that doing justice to integration of each FS will take time and effort.
In contrast, doing justice to the wide world of Linux users that may have concerns other than just that of having cool filesystems may involve deciding that instead of working on JFS or XFS integration, they'll work on something else.
Furthermore, the issue isn't necessarily of "justice to Linux users;" it may instead be that Linus will integrate in some FSes, and then decide that the notion of adding in more bores him, and say:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Now that their JFS is freed software, perhaps IBM would bankroll a defense of the GPL if a competing company tries to take the code private again (a la BSDL).
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein
Well.... I've just read the first 50 or so comments. There was alot of talk about the different JFS' put there for linux; IBM's ext3, xfs, Reiser and possibly AdvFS.
The nice thing is that, at least in the case of IBM's JFS and ext3, they're GPL'd!! What that means it that, basically, it doesn't matter who's is better. In the long run the best parts of each can be merged into a single, best of breed FS out there. Remember, with GPL/OSS, we're not so much competing against each other as we are helping each other with the "best practices" of software development for whatever projects are being worked on.
What we DO end up competing with collectively, is CLOSED SOURCE code development. Folks like our friends in Redmond (and eslewhere) can't begin to achieve this breadth of brain-storming and collaboration. Not only can they not (legally) use what's we've produced under GPL without "contributing to the cause" (even if it's just acknowledging open source's development superiority by using a product of it's dev. model), it's also something I don't think their marketing folks want to support. Remember, it's the exact antithesis of their business model. And we all know in Redmond, marketing will always prevail over technical aptitude and common sense.
I know that GUI for controlling LVM is 100x easier thing to solve than writing the real stuff which manages volumes but LVM controlling programs in OS/2 are anyway written in Java...