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BSD Journaled File System Ready For Testing
Dan writes "The Journaled File System for FreeBSD (JFS4BSD) Project has the goal of porting the JFS Technology from IBM/Linux to FreeBSD. It uses a log-based, byte-level file system that was developed for transaction-oriented, high performance systems. Scalable and robust, its advantage over non-journaled file systems is its quick restart capability: JFS can restore a file system to a consistent state in a matter of seconds or minutes. The jfsutils is under a compilable state on FreeBSD."
This strikes me as both a good and a bad thing. /home and JFS on the maildirs, for example. :-)
Good, because journalled filesystems are a Good Thing. I use FreeBSD exclusively on both desktop and workstation, and while SoftUpdates is very good, it and journalling have different aims. (SoftUpdates aims to keep all file metadata consistent at all times; journalling aims to keep all file -data- consistent at all times.) Choice is always good, and I could see myself using SoftUpdates on
However, this is a bit of a Bad Thing in that one of FreeBSD's simplicities has always been the One Filesystem, UFS. Granted, UFS has evolved some (UFS-Softupdates and now UFS2) but there was never a question as to which filesystem to choose: UFS has enough tunables, most of them automated, that you can optimize it for small-file, large-file, high-latency, low-latency, etc. I've found it to be capable of keeping up with the various Linux filesystems in their own areas. But if this is merged into -current, there will be a choice to make when preparing a slice. This is one of those things that's hard to change after the fact.
As for me, I'll stick with UFS2 until I see how this shapes up, but tally-ho!
One of the most impressive things about Linux is the XFS filesystem for it. It is thoroughly tested, production quality, and extremely robust. It is a please to deal with XFS. I personally have tested XFS for robustness and speed, and I have done things such as set up scripts to get, untar, copy erase, and start and stop various daemons and databases and then while this looping miasma was going on RIP THE HARD DRIVE from the system (SCA, SAF-TE, hop swappable). I have yet to see a lengthy FSCK or a corruption. Simply the best!
o bj-i3 86/sys/compile/JUNIPER
UFS2 is interesting, and provides a lot of improvements to UFS1, the soft updates are fairly effective at keeping things consistent and there is a background fsck in FreeBSD that works quite well.
A filesystem which is just as robust as XFS in terms of durability is JFS, but sadly I have found this filesystem to be a bit short on the performance side. I believe the main function of JFS is to provide support for those moving from older IBM systems to newer things that possibly include the us of Linux over AIX or OS/2.
I personally will not consider Reiser or EXT3 and could go into detail as to why. I have strong opinions as to what types of filesystems belong in production, and these will not qualify.
So, while JFS for FreeBSD is a good thing, I would like to see at some point an attempt to move XFS to FreeBSD, and if I had that capability, I would have already started.
FreeBSD is coherent, well documented and with things such as Vinum, and JFS-like filesystems and hopefully someday XFS, it really does quote a bit and is released under a flexible, corporate-friendly license (which I believe helps to foster and promulgate further development, not stifle or prevent it).
On of the series of equipment that I am most impressed with is the Juniper routers. They are the best routers available in my estimation (65xx switches are my most favored switches). I feel very at home with JunOS because it is largely FreeBSD:
JuneOS version 5.6R1.3 built by builder on 2003-01-02 20:19:20 UTC
Copyright (c) 1996-2001, Juniper Networks, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1992-2001 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
JUNOS 5.6R1.3 #0: 2003-01-02 20:38:33 UTC
builder@zu.juniper.net.:/build/zu-b/5.6R1.3/
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I think it would be nice to have a group working on filesystems for all BSD systems (Free, Net, Open, ...), just like what KAME does for IPv6 on BSD.
That way, every BSD project would benefit from the efforts.
- Hubert
Will it do quotas for users?
FreeBSD makes an awesome mail server for that reason alone (not that there isn't a ton more).
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
...as ReiserFS/EXT3/XFS make all the news here.\
And here you have discovered the biggest diffrerence between Linux and *BSD. BSD developers don't give a flying fsck about making the news, they just want good solid stable code. I mean, who out there with more than two bytes of valuable data gives a rat's arse about which filesystem makes the news the most?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
GPL'd code can be included in any BSD project, but it must not be statically linked.
So, this means that your boot (root) filesystem can never be JFS/XFS/ResierFS/ExtFS enabled, since the code to read your boot filesystem must be statically linked into the kernel.
You've actually got it backwards. The difference between the GPL and LGPL is that the LGPL does *not* include the linking restriction. It was originally called the 'Library GPL' (now 'Lesser GPL'), and was designed to allow libraries under a GPL-like licence to be linked to code under other licences.
Incidentally, Richard Stallman explains on the FSF web site that the idea behind the LGPL is to get programmers hooked on GNU/LGPL libraries, then switch to the full GPL to pull the rug out from under them and force them to either use the GPL for their larger works or go to the considerable trouble of either transitioning to alternative libraries or writing their own. The name change reflects Stallman's belief the GPL is now widespread enough that that it's no longer necessary to encourage libraries to be licensed under the LGPL instead of the full GPL.