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XFS Beta
Motor writes: "Things have been a bit quiet on the XFS front over the last few months, but a beta is finally here." They've got a document to to read before installing, as well as some installation notes on the site. It looks like it's a patch for 2.4.0-test5 kernel, and you can also get it as RPMs, or ProPack.
Due to known problems with later versions of gcc, version 2.91.66 must be used when compiling XFS and the associated kernel.
Does this mean that gcc 2.9 is officially supported by Linus and co to compile 2.4, or is this just required for XFS?
XFS works with RAID0. RAID1/5 is a bit more tricky, but we'll get to it.
Martin K. Petersen, XFS team
You can use XFS on Linux with LVM and MD RAID0. RAID1 and RAID5 might cause problems, because both they and XFS do nasty VM tricks. Since we're determined to go the kiobuf route in terms of I/O, that's were our efforts are concentrated. I'm working on adding kiobuf support to LVM as I type this. MD is next on my list.
Finally, the man pages have been updated for Linux. They're just not on the web page yet. We weren't supposed to release the beta until Friday, but we accidentally published the beta release web page and it was on Linuxtoday/Slashdot in no time. We're updating the docs as fast as we can. Hang in there.
Martin K. Petersen, XFS team
We're working on replacing the current block I/O subsystem in Linux (aimed at 2.5, but will exist in the XFS tree in 2.4). Currently, Linux does block I/O in entities known as buffer_heads, which carry 512 byte payloads. The new scheme is based upon Stephen Tweedie's kiobuf model, and will support big (SCSI supports up to 16 MB/req) I/Os. XFS was primarily designed for big sustained I/Os and once we're done with the kiobuf support we'll start profiling the code and push it to the limits.
Regarding ports to other architectures: My Alpha here at the office is running XFS, but I haven't committed the changes yet. I ported XFS to it for fun a month ago but never got around to committing the changes. I'll do that at some point. And possibly look at SPARC.
But then again. This is Open Source. Feel free to hack on it and send us patches!
Martin K. Petersen, XFS team
XFS Beta Release Caveats
Size and Memory Limitations 2 Terabyte filesystem limitation
Currently XFS is limited to filesystem smaller that 2 terabytes. This is due to limitations in the Linux block device I/O layers.
The XFS team is working with Linux developers to improve the Linux I/O layers. The improvements will include the support neccesary to exceed 2 Tbyte filesystems.
4 Gbyte memory limitation
Well, those "caveats" won't prevent my servers running for a long time!
I like ReiserFS, it's pretty good at what it does, like being a quick and easy journaling FS for your average joe-shmoe desktop power user. I love not having to fsck my 20GB HD on a powerfail. It's really slick that SuSE had ReiserFS in the default install.
HOWEVER.....
XFS is totaly designed as a high performance FS. It is fully 64bit (on 64 bit platforms, not a concern on x86), it is growable (very slick), and has basically everything you'd expect from a high-end "commercial-grade" journaling FS. Why? Cause it is. It's the Journaling FS that SGI designed and uses in all of their completely badass servers.
As for stability, XFS is pretty good now. There are a few issues. I had problems with XFS+Athlon+Ultra/ATA66, but for highend SMP machines with SCSI, XFS can't be beat!
Also, keep an eye out for IBM's JFS in the future.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
i dont know if anyone is interessted in this but there is a great article on journaling filesystems at linux gazette.
it explains different features and concepts related to the 4 different journaling filesystems. XFS, JFS, Ext3 and ReiserFS.
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