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Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) Now GPL

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the yet-another-convert dept.

melios writes "In a move that could help boost the scalability of Linux for grids and other advanced 64-bit multiprocessor applications, HP has released its Tru64 Unix Advanced File System (AdvFS) source code to the open source community. Source code, design documentation, and test suites for AdvFS are available on SourceForge."

10 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by tjstork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is there some reason to pick this file system over any of the other 100 file systems you can get for Linux?

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    1. Re:What's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nah dude, SGI's xfs (in vanilla Linux since ages now) can do all of those tricks, too.

    2. Re:What's the point? by mhall119 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hopefully this will make Sun re-consider licensing ZFS under the GPLv2.

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    3. Re:What's the point? by Znork · · Score: 5, Interesting

      it has snapshotting, intelligent striping and mirroring, dynamic resizing

      Eh, exactly which feature is unique? Snapshotting, striping, mirroring, resizing, encryption, etc, all of it can be done through the device mapper stack.

      I have situations where I don't want any filesystem at all on the mixed chunks (shared iSCSI block devices, for example), others where I want partial mirrors, parts crypted, parts remote-synced, etc. Mixing block device, volume management and filesystem together in my opinion, simply bad engineering. There are far too many assumptions about what people usually do so you end up with something suitable only for exactly what the designer had in mind, and worse, sometimes completely unsuitable for what people actually do.

      Having run both AdvFS and ZFS, I _vastly_ prefer the layered approach of ext3/LVM/md/etc.

      there's no comparable production filesystem

      Yes, well, try actually running ZFS in production for a while with any kind of odd load (and some not so odd loads at all). Sometimes things just aren't all they're hyped up to be.

      Filesystems are one part of most systems where 'exciting' isn't the most desirable feature.

    4. Re:What's the point? by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ZFS is an excellent filesystem but with some serious bugs that are poorly documented. I will admit I have not played with it in a while, but when I did, there were a considerable number of growing pains and kernel tunables that needed to be tweaked to get it to play nicely. The read block size is 128K by default, the ARC buffer size is ridiculously designed to assume that you want to cache data, filesystem syncs run to check integrity even if you have disk integrity checks on the SAN, etc.

  2. As a former Digital UNIX admin... by Minwee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...all I can say is that this would have been amazing news about ten years ago. Even five years ago it would have been pretty great.

    Now? Well, it sounds like HPaq is just kicking it to the curb so it will probably be another year or two before anyone can beat it into a working filesystem for anything but HPucks. There is already no shortage of file systems that can do what AdvFS could do, so by the time it is ready for prime time prime time will have moved on.

    Oh well. 1998 me is still pleased to hear this.

    1. Re:As a former Digital UNIX admin... by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Linux Weekly News has a comment from an HP developer indicating they aren't putting this out there so it can become a linux file system, but so that the lessons learned and parts of the code that are useful can be incorporated into one of the linux file systems of the future. I took it to mean, take our code and use whatever you can to make ext4 or ext5.
       
       

      While it would be fine with HP if someone wants to "port" AdvFS to Linux or any other
      operating system with a GPLv2 compatible license, this contribution is not intended to
      "compete" with other existing file system projects underway in and around the kernel.org
      development community.

      Rather, our hope is that the algorithms, design documentation, and test suite now available at
      the AdvFS site... and the active participation of HP engineers in various open-source file
      system projects who have lots of AdvFS experience... will help to accelerate the inclusion of
      AdvFS-like enterprise features and capabilities in next-generation file systems for Linux.

  3. Good News Indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used ADVFS when I worked at DEC/Compaq. It is a really nice filesystem to use.
    If the utilities are GPL's as well that is even better news.

    Copying whole filesystems is a breeze as is copying filesystem trees and traversing over volume mount points ( ie not including mount points and all their files.)

    It also gives you the ability to add/remove extra space to mounted volumes just like LVM does but IMHO without having to pre allocate it.
    I would expect that some of the features may well be in EXT4 but I think that some of the Utilities could be made to use EXT4. /S
     

  4. Tru64 goodness by JayMcB74 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really hope everyone will join me in thanking HP for this and encourage them to release more of the Tru64 OS, HP has been on my $&!â list since they bought and buried this years ago. They are sitting on so much good IP that I really wish that they would only make printers and just the 4000+ series at that.

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    1. Re:Tru64 goodness by uassholes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I used to be in DEC SW services. Some of their SW products were good, but the Alpha was outstanding. HP can go to hell and suck donkey ass for destroying it and other DEC products in favor of Fucktanium and their own horseshit.