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Ext3cow Versioning File System Released For 2.6

Posted by kdawson on from the have-a-cow-man dept.

Zachary Peterson writes "Ext3cow, an open-source versioning file system based on ext3, has been released for the 2.6 Linux kernel. Ext3cow allows users to view their file system as it appeared at any point in time through a natural, time-shifting interface. This is can be very useful for revision control, intrusion detection, preventing data loss, and meeting the requirements of data retention legislation. See the link for kernel patches and details."

4 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. True undelete by ex-geek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Undelete, not half-assed, desktop based trash can implementations, is something I've always been missing on Linux. And yes, I generally know what I'm doing, but i'm also human and do make mistakes.

  2. Re:Can No One Else INNOVATE? by beezly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Go away MacTroll...

    Veritas VxFS has had this for years. Snapshotting has been implemented in the Linux LVM layer for ages. This is just another way to do it.

    I don't know anything about the technical implementation of Vista Shadow Copies or Apple's Time Machine, but if it's anything like ZFS then I'll be impressed. I believe there are rumours about the next release of OS X using ZFS (which was developed by Sun), but I'll believe it when I see it.

  3. Re:Excellent work but... by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your wrong, it also hurts those people who write drivers that aren't accepted into the kernel. And it also hurts end users or haven't you noticed the lack of Linux drivers for a lot of hardware.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  4. Re:Excellent work but... by Toffins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Compatibility across versions is guaranteed only at the Source Code level

    (Disclaimer: Linux is excellent) But is compatibility even guaranteed at source code level?
    Here are some specific examples where source level API changes have occurred:

    1. Consider that up to linux-2.6.6 all SATA disks were treated as IDE PATA disks accessible via /dev/hd*, but in linux-2.6.7 they started to be treated as SATA disks only accessible via /dev/sd*. This changeover caused existing SATA disk systems to become unbootable after upgrading to linux-2.6.7 because the boot device at /dev/hd* was no longer accessible. Never documented in kernel/Documentation/*

    2. And between linux-2.6.15 and linux-2.6.20 the way the usb subsystem handled usb devices was changed so that usermode usb drivers like the usermode speedtouch driver was broken due to kernel returning EINVAL from each USBDEVFS_SUBMITURB command which is required after a USBDEVFS_CONTROL command issued by the modem_run ADSL line monitoring process. This generates thousands of error messages per second via syslogd. No news of this particular aspect of the usb changes was ever documented in kernel/Documentation/*.