Slashdot Mirror
XFS Merged into Linux 2.4
Alphix writes "As noted on KernelTrap Marcelo has merged XFS into 2.4 after a code review by Christoph Hellwig. The mail from Marcelo on LKML is here. Apparently it touched very little VFS code so people not using XFS shouldn't see any ill effects from this (it's even supposed to fix some VFS bugs).
XFS is described by SGI as '...a journalling filesystem developed by SGI and used in SGI's IRIX operating system. It is now also available under GPL for linux. It is extremely scalable, using btrees extensively to support large and/or sparse files, and extremely large directories. The journalling capability means no more waiting for fsck's or worrying about meta-data corruption.' Let the stability vs. new-features flamewar begin."
SGI released XFS into "the wild" and has ensured its longevity with little to no support on their part and increased the number of "out of box" coders they can hire to work on FS projects.
Microsoft....hasn't. Heck, MS is preparing to charge media makers (CF, SM, MMC, etc) to use FAT.
I say media makers switch to using XFS or another GPL'd journaling file systems. Won't take long for other platforms to support it in bulk (make/ config.....) and for stuff like flash where corruptions can occur often, I'd like a bit of journaling to minimize the impact.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Faster, More trusted (SGI's been using it for how many years now?), not sure how it compares cpu-wise.
The main thing that keeps me on ext3 is ext2 backwards compatability. You dont have to worry about having custom repair/bootdisks to recognize your install, and its easier to do stuff like mount under windows (great for dual booting)
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Back in the day I would always just use ext2. Then I realized, hey there are other filesystems to choose from, so I decided to shoot in the dark and try reiser and xfs and ext3. xfs has always been the most awesome.
Just one thing. Now that we've got the source code for dealing with xfs, can someone write a driver so I can mount my xfs partitions from windows xp? It would really help out a lot of us dual booting types. I would do it myself, but I don't know jack about how filesystems work. I just know which ones do what.
I hope they put the xfs into 2.6 also. Maybe it wont be necessary to have seperate xfs-sources in gentoo anymore and xfs will finally be included in the gentoo-sources.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
after a code review by Christoph Hellwig
Incidentally, this is the Christoph Hellwig who contributed code to the kernel on Calderas behalf. His contributions may become an important point in the SCO-IBM-RedHat battle.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
This was just mentioned here on /. the other day, but according to this article on Groklaw, Christoph Hellwig is (was?) a Caldera (SCO) employee.
SCO is going after SGI for XFS, when one of their own employees was working on it.