Re: XFS?

Re: XFS?

[Andi Kleen]

Thunder from the hill <thunder@lightweight.ods.org> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, khromy wrote:
> > What's up with XFS in linux-2.5? I've seen some patches sent to the list
> > but I havn't seen any replies from linus.. What needs to be done to
> > finally merge it?
> 
> It has been stated quite regularly that XFS
> a) doesn't always work like it should yet

That's quite bogus. While not being perfect XFS just works fine for lots
of people in production and performs very well for a lot of tasks.

> b) involves some changes which Linus doesn't like in particular, for 
>    pretty good reasons.

I think that's FUD too. That last patch had 6 lines or so of changes 
to generic code, everything else was already merged.

I guess it just ended up in Linus' spam filters, like some other things...

-Andi

Re: XFS?

[Shawn]

XFS needs a sponser. Who amung Linus's circle of trust cares to comment
or re-evaluate?

If no one, I guess it's a moot point.

On 09/09, Andi Kleen said something like:
> Thunder from the hill <thunder@lightweight.ods.org> writes:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, khromy wrote:
> > > What's up with XFS in linux-2.5? I've seen some patches sent to the list
> > > but I havn't seen any replies from linus.. What needs to be done to
> > > finally merge it?
> > 
> > It has been stated quite regularly that XFS
> > a) doesn't always work like it should yet
> 
> That's quite bogus. While not being perfect XFS just works fine for lots
> of people in production and performs very well for a lot of tasks.
> 
> > b) involves some changes which Linus doesn't like in particular, for 
> >    pretty good reasons.
> 
> I think that's FUD too. That last patch had 6 lines or so of changes 
> to generic code, everything else was already merged.
> 
> I guess it just ended up in Linus' spam filters, like some other things...
> 
> -Andi
> -
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Shawn Leas
core@enodev.com

I planted some bird seed.  A bird came up.  Now I don't know
what to feed it.
						-- Stephen Wright

Re: XFS?

[Robert Love]

On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 17:20, Shawn wrote:

> XFS needs a sponser. Who amung Linus's circle of trust cares to comment
> or re-evaluate?
>
> If no one, I guess it's a moot point.

Christoph Hellwig (hch) is working on the patches... I cannot speak for
Linus, but I think most of us trust him.  I do.

	Robert Love

Re: XFS?

[Mike Galbraith]

At 04:20 PM 9/9/2002 -0500, Shawn wrote:
>XFS needs a sponser. Who amung Linus's circle of trust cares to comment
>or re-evaluate?
>
>If no one, I guess it's a moot point.

(see below)

>On 09/09, Andi Kleen said something like:
> > Thunder from the hill <thunder@lightweight.ods.org> writes:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, khromy wrote:
> > > > What's up with XFS in linux-2.5? I've seen some patches sent to the 
> list
> > > > but I havn't seen any replies from linus.. What needs to be done to
> > > > finally merge it?
> > >
> > > It has been stated quite regularly that XFS
> > > a) doesn't always work like it should yet
> >
> > That's quite bogus. While not being perfect XFS just works fine for lots
> > of people in production and performs very well for a lot of tasks.
> >
> > > b) involves some changes which Linus doesn't like in particular, for
> > >    pretty good reasons.
> >
> > I think that's FUD too. That last patch had 6 lines or so of changes
> > to generic code, everything else was already merged.

                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

         -Mike

Re: XFS?

[Shawn]

I'm not sure what this is intended to communicate.

The question was specifically regarding filesystem support, so I'll
assume you meant to point out that XFS does not always work like it
should.

Then, am I incorrect that since almost all of XFS that's left to merge
is XFS code and not changes to the kernel at large?

If this is correct, could I then make the assumption that merging XFS
would be minimally impactful for those kernel user who do not enable it?

Linus incorporated reiserfs long before it "always functioned as it is
supposed to", so I find myself wondering where your point was.

(see below) and "^^^^^^^^^^^^^" don't fully cover your thoughts I'm
afraid.

On 09/10, Mike Galbraith said something like:
> At 04:20 PM 9/9/2002 -0500, Shawn wrote:
> >XFS needs a sponser. Who amung Linus's circle of trust cares to comment
> >or re-evaluate?
> >
> >If no one, I guess it's a moot point.
> 
> (see below)
> 
> >On 09/09, Andi Kleen said something like:
> > > Thunder from the hill <thunder@lightweight.ods.org> writes:
> > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, khromy wrote:
> > > > > What's up with XFS in linux-2.5? I've seen some patches sent to the 
> > list
> > > > > but I havn't seen any replies from linus.. What needs to be done to
> > > > > finally merge it?
> > > >
> > > > It has been stated quite regularly that XFS
> > > > a) doesn't always work like it should yet
> > >
> > > That's quite bogus. While not being perfect XFS just works fine for lots
> > > of people in production and performs very well for a lot of tasks.
> > >
> > > > b) involves some changes which Linus doesn't like in particular, for
> > > >    pretty good reasons.
> > >
> > > I think that's FUD too. That last patch had 6 lines or so of changes
> > > to generic code, everything else was already merged.
> 
>                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
>          -Mike
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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--
Shawn Leas
core@enodev.com

I got food poisoning today.  I don't know when I'll use it.
						-- Stephen Wright

Re: XFS?

[Robert Love]

On Tue, 2002-09-10 at 15:23, Shawn wrote:

> If this is correct, could I then make the assumption that merging XFS
> would be minimally impactful for those kernel user who do not enable it?

Yes, and I think it will go in.  It has just not made it passed Linus's
filters yet, but it will - hch knows what he is doing.

	Robert Love

Re: XFS?

[Thunder from the hill]

Hi,

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Shawn wrote:
> Linus incorporated reiserfs long before it "always functioned as it is
> supposed to", so I find myself wondering where your point was.

It was my point, actually. I was referring to some crashes caused by XFS, 
however, they seem resolved. I also want to be commonly known as not 
hating XFS. It seems pretty cool.

			Thunder
-- 
--./../...-/. -.--/---/..-/.-./..././.-../..-. .---/..-/.../- .-
--/../-./..-/-/./--..-- ../.----./.-../.-.. --./../...-/. -.--/---/..-
.- -/---/--/---/.-./.-./---/.--/.-.-.-
--./.-/-.../.-./.././.-../.-.-.-

Re: XFS?

[John Alvord]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002 14:23:47 -0500, Shawn <core@enodev.com> wrote:

>I'm not sure what this is intended to communicate.
>
>The question was specifically regarding filesystem support, so I'll
>assume you meant to point out that XFS does not always work like it
>should.
>
>Then, am I incorrect that since almost all of XFS that's left to merge
>is XFS code and not changes to the kernel at large?
>
>If this is correct, could I then make the assumption that merging XFS
>would be minimally impactful for those kernel user who do not enable it?
>
>Linus incorporated reiserfs long before it "always functioned as it is
>supposed to", so I find myself wondering where your point was.

If memory serves, Linus incorporated reiserfs after several major
distributors started including it. Linus seems to pay a lot of
attention to distributions in areas where he isn't so much interested.

So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?

john

Re: XFS?

[Hans Reiser]

John Alvord wrote:

>  
>
>If memory serves, Linus incorporated reiserfs after several major
>distributors started including it. Linus seems to pay a lot of
>attention to distributions in areas where he isn't so much interested.
>
>So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
>
>john
>
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>
>  
>
Mandrake does if I remember right.  

XFS is cool, and their allocation at flush innovation has influenced 
reiser4 deeply.  I wish them well.

Hans

Re: XFS?

[Joe Kellner]

> So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
> 
> john
> 

Mandrake has had XFS support in the default boot kernel since 8.0. AFAIK, Suse
and  Slackware also have XFS capable kernels now too.



-------------------------------------------------
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Re: XFS?

[David Lang]

and you know something is mainstream when slackware includes it.

said as a longtime slackware user :-)

I know slackware 8.1 included XFS, I don't think it was in 8.0.

David Lang

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Joe Kellner wrote:

> Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:17:52 -0400
> From: Joe Kellner <jdk@kingsmeadefarm.com>
> To: John Alvord <jalvo@mbay.net>
> Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: XFS?
>
>
> > So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
> >
> > john
> >
>
> Mandrake has had XFS support in the default boot kernel since 8.0. AFAIK, Suse
> and  Slackware also have XFS capable kernels now too.
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> sent via KingsMeade secure webmail http://www.kingsmeadefarm.com
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> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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>

Re: XFS?

[Tomas Szepe]

> > So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
> 
> Mandrake has had XFS support in the default boot kernel since 8.0. AFAIK, Suse
> and  Slackware also have XFS capable kernels now too.

Slackware lets you use a special install kernel that has XFS [1] compiled in
and that the installer can take advantage of.  However, you have to provide
your own XFS vmlinuz for actually booting into the new system, as Slackware
rightly continues to use bare Marcelo(tm) kernels.

[1] and JFS, too.

T.

Re: XFS?

[Tomas Szepe]

> > So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
> 
> Don't know about RedHat & others, but SuSE _does_ ship XFS.

RedHat apparently doesn't want any more trouble than absolutely
necessary and only provides ext[32] installs by default. SuSE and
Mandrake can't -- *IMHO* -- be considered sensible distributions.

T.

Re: XFS?

[Steve Lord]

On Tue, 2002-09-10 at 17:18, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> > So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
> 
> Don't know about RedHat & others, but SuSE _does_ ship XFS.
> 

I should probably keep out of the discussion and I am not presenting
this as an argument for inclusion, but for an incomplete list of XFS
users and distribution including it look here:

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/xfs_users.html

Steve

Re: XFS?

[Nick LeRoy]

> So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?

Don't know about RedHat & others, but SuSE _does_ ship XFS.

-Nick

Re: XFS?

[Bryan Whitehead]

Thunder from the hill wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Shawn wrote:
> 
>>Linus incorporated reiserfs long before it "always functioned as it is
>>supposed to", so I find myself wondering where your point was.
> 
> 
> It was my point, actually. I was referring to some crashes caused by XFS, 
> however, they seem resolved. I also want to be commonly known as not 
> hating XFS. It seems pretty cool.
> 
> 			Thunder

I know of some rather large projects that use it with mandrake... But I 
can't be specific. ;)

-- 
Bryan Whitehead
SysAdmin - JPL - Interferometry Systems and Technology
Phone: 818 354 2903
driver@jpl.nasa.gov

Re: XFS?

[Bernd Eckenfels]

In article <20020910203122.GU26075@louise.pinerecords.com> you wrote:
> Slackware lets you use a special install kernel that has XFS [1] compiled in

so does debian do support XFS:
http://www.physik.tu-cottbus.de/~george/woody_xfs/

Greetings
Bernd

Re: XFS?

[Mike Galbraith]

At 02:23 PM 9/10/2002 -0500, Shawn wrote:
>I'm not sure what this is intended to communicate.

(sigh)
If "everything else" the XFS team has asked for has gone in, it seems 
unlikely that
sponsorship is needed.

         -Mike

Re: XFS?

[jw schultz]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 03:18:31PM -0700, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> > So does Redhat/Suse/??? ship XFS yet?
> 
> Don't know about RedHat & others, but SuSE _does_ ship XFS.
> 

Yes it does.  I'm guessing the one in 8.0 is an older
version because i found it performs abysmally.  It seemed
stable enough but i used it for backups with lots of file
creation and deletion and my jobs took about 10 times longer
to run than on ext2 or JFS (also included in the 2.4.18+
SuSE 8.0)  For other use it is probably fine.  I look
forward to trying newer versions.

While i'm talking about it online resize including shrinkage
is a fairly high priority for me.  Any journaling filesystem
without that feature is going to be a second-rater.  So
without it XFS is unlikely to become a primary filesystme
choice for me.  That said, i'm glad to see variety in the
journaling filesystems and look forward to XFS getting in
mainline so we can use whatever filesystem that best meets
our needs.  This of course means that we will need decent,
independent, comparisons of the filesystems.

And think about this:  In almost all other OSs of substance
you have one or two basic filesystem types and if you want
journaling you have to pay extra for it.  And journaling
filesystems don't have to be fast, there is very little real
competition.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw@pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt

Re: XFS?

[Shawn]

Which is why I pointed out that the issue at hand was not regarding the
everything else, but in fact the actual filesystem support.

As far as why the rest is still pending, I was just offering ideas.

A lot of this thread is advocacy as opposed to substantive conversation
about the how and/or why/why not of inclusion of XFS into mainline.
Fankly, there is no /real/ answer except "Linus has not weighed in on
the current question".

I lost my ability to invest emotions in either side of huge kernel
debates when the devfs and lvm wars happened.

On 09/10, Mike Galbraith said something like:
> At 02:23 PM 9/10/2002 -0500, Shawn wrote:
> >I'm not sure what this is intended to communicate.
> 
> (sigh)
> If "everything else" the XFS team has asked for has gone in, it seems 
> unlikely that
> sponsorship is needed.
> 
>          -Mike

--
Shawn Leas
core@enodev.com

I went to the eye doctor and found out I needed glasses for reading.  So,
I got some flip-up contact lenses.
						-- Stephen Wright

Re: XFS?

[Bill Davidsen]

On 9 Sep 2002, Andi Kleen wrote:

> Thunder from the hill <thunder@lightweight.ods.org> writes:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, khromy wrote:
> > > What's up with XFS in linux-2.5? I've seen some patches sent to the list
> > > but I havn't seen any replies from linus.. What needs to be done to
> > > finally merge it?
> > 
> > It has been stated quite regularly that XFS
> > a) doesn't always work like it should yet
> 
> That's quite bogus. While not being perfect XFS just works fine for lots
> of people in production and performs very well for a lot of tasks.

More to the point, a quick scan of LKML will show that there are fixes for
ext3 and reisser on a regular basis, so one must assume that they don't
always work as they should either. XFS is in a number of distributions,
and is stable for users.
 
> > b) involves some changes which Linus doesn't like in particular, for 
> >    pretty good reasons.
> 
> I think that's FUD too. That last patch had 6 lines or so of changes 
> to generic code, everything else was already merged.

Does that mean he should only dislike it a little because it's small? At
this stage I would hope he will at least tell you why it wasn't accepted,
since XFS is a desirable feature for many people (as evidence vendors
providing it).

I'd like XFS, I think it's a good feature politically, hopefully it will
not just drop just as it's becoming stable for non-critical production
use.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.

Re: XFS?

[Nick LeRoy]

On Wednesday 11 September 2002 01:43, jw schultz wrote:

Not that I'm trying to keep this thread alive or anything..

> Yes it does.  I'm guessing the one in 8.0 is an older
> version because i found it performs abysmally.  It seemed
> stable enough but i used it for backups with lots of file
> creation and deletion and my jobs took about 10 times longer
> to run than on ext2 or JFS (also included in the 2.4.18+
> SuSE 8.0)  For other use it is probably fine.  I look
> forward to trying newer versions.

I wasn't making any claims to have _tried_ it or anything.  I simply stated 
that it's _there_ and, I think, supported.  Personally, I've switched to 
Reiserfs (thanks, Hans!), which I'm _really_ happy with.  Yeah, I should 
investigate the other options, but, honestly, there isn't a lot of neccessity 
to.

> And think about this:  In almost all other OSs of substance
> you have one or two basic filesystem types and if you want
> journaling you have to pay extra for it.  And journaling
> filesystems don't have to be fast, there is very little real
> competition.

I'm not sure if you're saying that this is a bad thing or a good thing.  FWIW, 
I think this is a wonderful feature, albeit potentially confusing to a Newbie   
For my O2 running IRIX I get XFS whether I like it or not, for Solaris I get 
UFS no matter how much it sucks (I'm not really saying that it does; I don't 
have much knowledge of it to be honest).  This multitude of choices really 
causes competition between them, and makes them all better in the long run.

Think about this:  Namesys is working on Reiserfs v4.0.  v4.0.  Hell - it's 
only been incorporated into the mainstream kernel for less than a year (at 
least by my recollection), yet it keeps advancing.  I have _no_ idea what UFS 
version Solaris 8 is using (admittedly at least somewhat due to ignorance -- 
I use Solaris because I have a good ol' SPARCprinter which alas is not 
supported by Linux), or whether they've bother to do development on it to 
make it better, faster, etc.  Yet, _we_ get this advancement all the time.  
Isn't it great?!

Ok, time to step off my soapbox and get back to work.

-Nick

Re: XFS?

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 2002-09-11 at 16:12, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> More to the point, a quick scan of LKML will show that there are fixes for
> ext3 and reisser on a regular basis, so one must assume that they don't
> always work as they should either. XFS is in a number of distributions,
> and is stable for users.

Thats never been the big concern. The problem has always been that XFS
was very invasive code so it might break stuff for people who dont
choose to use experimental xfs stuff. Thats slowly improving

Re: XFS?

[Hans Reiser]

Nick LeRoy wrote:

>  
>
>
>Think about this:  Namesys is working on Reiserfs v4.0.  v4.0.  Hell - it's 
>only been incorporated into the mainstream kernel for less than a year (at 
>least by my recollection), yet it keeps advancing.  I have _no_ idea what UFS 
>version Solaris 8 is using (admittedly at least somewhat due to ignorance -- 
>I use Solaris because I have a good ol' SPARCprinter which alas is not 
>supported by Linux), or whether they've bother to do development on it to 
>make it better, faster, etc.  Yet, _we_ get this advancement all the time.  
>Isn't it great?!
>
>  
>
I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch, 
and far better in every way.  :)

Hans

[OT] Re: XFS?

[Joe Kellner]

Quoting Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>:



> I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch, 
> and far better in every way.  :)
> 
> Hans
> 


But will it un-delete my customers files that they accidently deleted and they
want me to get back? :)

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Re: [OT] Re: XFS?

[Hans Reiser]

Joe Kellner wrote:

>Quoting Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>:
>
>
>
>  
>
>>I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch, 
>>and far better in every way.  :)
>>
>>Hans
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>But will it un-delete my customers files that they accidently deleted and they
>want me to get back? :)
>
>-------------------------------------------------
>sent via KingsMeade secure webmail http://www.kingsmeadefarm.com
>
>
>  
>
If you write the appropriate plugin, yes....;-)

Re: XFS?

[Mike Galbraith]

At 09:55 AM 9/11/2002 -0500, Shawn wrote:
>Which is why I pointed out that the issue at hand was not regarding the
>everything else, but in fact the actual filesystem support.

I was just trying to say that everything _appears_ to be on track from my
(remote) perspective.  I've noticed no gripes from the XFS team, only
evidence that development continues.  If there are 6 lines of generic code
changes left, that means a lot has happened.

>As far as why the rest is still pending, I was just offering ideas.
>
>A lot of this thread is advocacy as opposed to substantive conversation
>about the how and/or why/why not of inclusion of XFS into mainline.

Advocacy without technical meat sucks.

>Fankly, there is no /real/ answer except "Linus has not weighed in on
>the current question".

Hey, maybe he's trying to convince (blackmail;) them to port some bandwidth
guarantee stuff ;)))))  (I hope that's enough smilies)

>I lost my ability to invest emotions in either side of huge kernel
>debates when the devfs and lvm wars happened.

I love it when the heavyweights square off  (oooo:).  Unfortunately, that often
leads to a bunch of dipsticks hollering "food fight!" ;-)

         -Mike

Re: XFS?

[Gerhard Mack]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Hans Reiser wrote:

> I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch,
> and far better in every way.  :)

Same disk layout or a new one ?

	Gerhard


--
Gerhard Mack

gmack@innerfire.net

<>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.

Re: XFS?

[Lorenzo Allegrucci]

On Wednesday 11 September 2002 19:08, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch,
> and far better in every way.  :)

I don't speak as developer, but I really hope it follows the Linux
CodingStyle this time.  Code review would get much benefit, making v4
even better.

Re: XFS?

[Eric Sandeen]

On Wed, 2002-09-11 at 11:03, Alan Cox wrote:
> Thats never been the big concern. The problem has always been that XFS
> was very invasive code so it might break stuff for people who dont
> choose to use experimental xfs stuff. Thats slowly improving

Alan - 

The last patch Christoph posted against 2.5 is not the least bit 
invasive.  Excluding documentation and configuration files, these are
the changes:

o 1 new process flag:   +#define PF_FSTRANS 0x00100000
o 1 new CTL_VM name:    +       VM_PAGEBUF=18
o 1 new CTL_FS name:    +       FS_XFS=17
o 1 exported symbol:    +EXPORT_SYMBOL(mark_page_accessed);

and of course an addition to fs/Makefile:
+obj-$(CONFIG_XFS_FS)           += xfs/

That's it.  The rest is under fs/xfs.

(2.4 is more invasive, but this thread started out talking about XFS in
2.5).

-Eric
-- 
Eric Sandeen      XFS for Linux     http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs
sandeen@sgi.com   SGI, Inc.         651-683-3102

Re: [OT] Re: XFS?

[Remco Post]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002 13:13:24 -0400
"Joe Kellner" <jdk@kingsmeadefarm.com> wrote:


> 
> But will it un-delete my customers files that they accidently deleted and they
> want me to get back? :)
> 
Do what the mac does, use mv when people type rm... ;)

Remco

Re: XFS?

[jw schultz]

On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 08:20:36AM -0700, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 September 2002 01:43, jw schultz wrote:
> 
> > And think about this:  In almost all other OSs of substance
> > you have one or two basic filesystem types and if you want
> > journaling you have to pay extra for it.  And journaling
> > filesystems don't have to be fast, there is very little real
> > competition.
> 
> I'm not sure if you're saying that this is a bad thing or a good thing.  FWIW, 

Unless you like tyrany choice is a good thing(TM).  Trust
me, i don't like tyrany.

> I think this is a wonderful feature, albeit potentially confusing to a Newbie   
> For my O2 running IRIX I get XFS whether I like it or not, for Solaris I get 
> UFS no matter how much it sucks (I'm not really saying that it does; I don't 
> have much knowledge of it to be honest).  This multitude of choices really 
> causes competition between them, and makes them all better in the long run.

On Solaris and some other platforms you can, with lots of
money, buy a license to run the Veritas journaling
filesystem.  It comes with a license manager and you have to
get license keys to mount the filesystems.  Ever had a
filesystem not come up after a reboot because the license
expired, i have (ouch, i told management to renew the
license).  Is veritas fast? I don't know.  They hype the
journaling, not speed.  And what are you going to benchmark
against?.

Recently Veritas announced they were going to support Linux.
I'm curious to see how they fare in a shootout with the
other journaling filesystems.  Of course i wouldn't taint MY
kernel to run it when i have four others to choose from.

> Think about this:  Namesys is working on Reiserfs v4.0.  v4.0.  Hell - it's 
> only been incorporated into the mainstream kernel for less than a year (at 
> least by my recollection), yet it keeps advancing.  I have _no_ idea what UFS 
> version Solaris 8 is using (admittedly at least somewhat due to ignorance -- 
> I use Solaris because I have a good ol' SPARCprinter which alas is not 
> supported by Linux), or whether they've bother to do development on it to 
> make it better, faster, etc.  Yet, _we_ get this advancement all the time.  
> Isn't it great?!

Fantastic.  And that is largly without competition.  Just
wait and watch what the JFS and XFS developers do to improve
their products to keep up.

As for UFS, the only thing they can do to it is to adjust
the block allocation heuristics.  Something i'm sure they
have done to death for the TPC benchmarks they live and die
by.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw@pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt

Re: XFS?

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 2002-09-11 at 19:55, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> The last patch Christoph posted against 2.5 is not the least bit 
> invasive.  Excluding documentation and configuration files, these are
> the changes:

As I said its improving

Re: XFS?

[Nick LeRoy]

> > I'm not sure if you're saying that this is a bad thing or a good thing. 
> > FWIW,
>
> Unless you like tyrany choice is a good thing(TM).  Trust
> me, i don't like tyrany.

I like the way you phrased that...

> On Solaris and some other platforms you can, with lots of
> money, buy a license to run the Veritas journaling
> filesystem.  It comes with a license manager and you have to
> get license keys to mount the filesystems.  Ever had a
> filesystem not come up after a reboot because the license
> expired, i have (ouch, i told management to renew the
> license).  Is veritas fast? I don't know.  They hype the
> journaling, not speed.  And what are you going to benchmark
> against?.

Wow..  I thought it was a pain in the ass when we had licencing problems with 
ClearCase.

> Recently Veritas announced they were going to support Linux.
> I'm curious to see how they fare in a shootout with the
> other journaling filesystems.  Of course i wouldn't taint MY
> kernel to run it when i have four others to choose from.

Why, oh, why would anybody _pay_ for something like that when there's a 
plethora of excellent filesystems for Linux already?!

> Fantastic.  And that is largly without competition.  Just
> wait and watch what the JFS and XFS developers do to improve
> their products to keep up.

At least there seems to be active & open development on them.

Thanks for the reply!

-Nick

Re: XFS?

[Robert Varga]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2065 bytes --]

On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 02:21:46PM -0700, jw schultz wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 08:20:36AM -0700, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> > On Wednesday 11 September 2002 01:43, jw schultz wrote:
> > I think this is a wonderful feature, albeit potentially confusing to a Newbie   
> > For my O2 running IRIX I get XFS whether I like it or not, for Solaris I get 
> > UFS no matter how much it sucks (I'm not really saying that it does; I don't 
> > have much knowledge of it to be honest).  This multitude of choices really 
> > causes competition between them, and makes them all better in the long run.
> 
> On Solaris and some other platforms you can, with lots of
> money, buy a license to run the Veritas journaling
> filesystem.  It comes with a license manager and you have to
> get license keys to mount the filesystems.  Ever had a
> filesystem not come up after a reboot because the license
> expired, i have (ouch, i told management to renew the
> license).  Is veritas fast? I don't know.  They hype the
> journaling, not speed.  And what are you going to benchmark
> against?.

Against UFS, of course [1] :-) Their hype is "our journal is faster than
UFS", which is probably true. They have extent-based allocation,
which is good for their greatest hype - performance with databases
(see all the marketing shredder-food about [Cached] QuickIO).
They have hot resizing, which fast as hell (again, compared to UFS),
they have snapshots, which are cool. And don't forget the GFS capability,
which I am yet to see in action. [2]

So in Solaris world, for large filesystems, Veritas is the winner. I am
really looking forward to seeing how will they do in the OpenSource
world.

[1] Actually they benchmark Oracle on raw devices vs. Cached QuickIO, too.
[2] Even tough the options are expensive, in my experience all of them
work perfectly.

-- 
Kind regards,
Robert Varga
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
n@hq.sk                                          http://hq.sk/~nite/gpgkey.txt

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: XFS?

[jw schultz]

On Thu, Sep 12, 2002 at 01:01:38AM +0200, Robert Varga wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 02:21:46PM -0700, jw schultz wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 08:20:36AM -0700, Nick LeRoy wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 11 September 2002 01:43, jw schultz wrote:
> > > I think this is a wonderful feature, albeit potentially confusing to a Newbie   
> > > For my O2 running IRIX I get XFS whether I like it or not, for Solaris I get 
> > > UFS no matter how much it sucks (I'm not really saying that it does; I don't 
> > > have much knowledge of it to be honest).  This multitude of choices really 
> > > causes competition between them, and makes them all better in the long run.
> > 
> > On Solaris and some other platforms you can, with lots of
> > money, buy a license to run the Veritas journaling
> > filesystem.  It comes with a license manager and you have to
> > get license keys to mount the filesystems.  Ever had a
> > filesystem not come up after a reboot because the license
> > expired, i have (ouch, i told management to renew the
> > license).  Is veritas fast? I don't know.  They hype the
> > journaling, not speed.  And what are you going to benchmark
> > against?.
> 
> Against UFS, of course [1] :-) Their hype is "our journal is faster than
> UFS", which is probably true. They have extent-based allocation,

Comparing Veritas FS against UFS is like comparing apples
and steak.  Their goals are so diffent it is rediculous.

My comment is that with no apples-apples comparisons (or at
least apples-pears) who knows how good it is.

> which is good for their greatest hype - performance with databases
> (see all the marketing shredder-food about [Cached] QuickIO).
> They have hot resizing, which fast as hell (again, compared to UFS),
> they have snapshots, which are cool. And don't forget the GFS capability,
> which I am yet to see in action. [2]
> 
> So in Solaris world, for large filesystems, Veritas is the winner. I am
> really looking forward to seeing how will they do in the OpenSource
> world.

Don't get me wrong, feature-wise Veritas FS is a great
product.  Their hot resizing (including shrink) is a
must-have feature.  I never had a lick of problems with it
despite flaky GbIX (Gibabit FCAL Interface transceivers).

> [1] Actually they benchmark Oracle on raw devices vs. Cached QuickIO, too.
> [2] Even tough the options are expensive, in my experience all of them
> work perfectly.



-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw@pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt

Re: XFS?

[Bryan Whitehead]

Hans Reiser wrote:
> Nick LeRoy wrote:
> 
>>  
>>
>>
>> Think about this:  Namesys is working on Reiserfs v4.0.  v4.0.  Hell - 
>> it's only been incorporated into the mainstream kernel for less than a 
>> year (at least by my recollection), yet it keeps advancing.  I have 
>> _no_ idea what UFS version Solaris 8 is using (admittedly at least 
>> somewhat due to ignorance -- I use Solaris because I have a good ol' 
>> SPARCprinter which alas is not supported by Linux), or whether they've 
>> bother to do development on it to make it better, faster, etc.  Yet, 
>> _we_ get this advancement all the time.  Isn't it great?!
>>
>>  
>>
> I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch, 
> and far better in every way.  :)
> 
> Hans

What blows my mind (from someone that only watches kernel development) 
is how one project, XFS, a filesystem basically "done" is excluded from 
the mainline kernel while ReiserFS is getting a "complete rewrite from 
scratch".

Maybe I don't get it cause I'm just watching... ;)

-- 
Bryan Whitehead
SysAdmin - JPL - Interferometry Systems and Technology
Phone: 818 354 2903
driver@jpl.nasa.gov

Re: XFS?

[Nikita Danilov]

Bryan Whitehead writes:
 > Hans Reiser wrote:
 > > Nick LeRoy wrote:
 > > 
 > >>  
 > >>
 > >>
 > >> Think about this:  Namesys is working on Reiserfs v4.0.  v4.0.  Hell - 
 > >> it's only been incorporated into the mainstream kernel for less than a 
 > >> year (at least by my recollection), yet it keeps advancing.  I have 
 > >> _no_ idea what UFS version Solaris 8 is using (admittedly at least 
 > >> somewhat due to ignorance -- I use Solaris because I have a good ol' 
 > >> SPARCprinter which alas is not supported by Linux), or whether they've 
 > >> bother to do development on it to make it better, faster, etc.  Yet, 
 > >> _we_ get this advancement all the time.  Isn't it great?!
 > >>
 > >>  
 > >>
 > > I think you'll really like v4, it is a complete rewrite from scratch, 
 > > and far better in every way.  :)
 > > 
 > > Hans
 > 
 > What blows my mind (from someone that only watches kernel development) 
 > is how one project, XFS, a filesystem basically "done" is excluded from 
 > the mainline kernel while ReiserFS is getting a "complete rewrite from 
 > scratch".
 > 
 > Maybe I don't get it cause I'm just watching... ;)

Then you missed "reiserfs inclusion into the kernel" soap opera.

And besides, reiserfs in mainline to no extent means reiser4 in mainline
(unfortunately).

 > 
 > -- 
 > Bryan Whitehead

Nikita.

 > SysAdmin - JPL - Interferometry Systems and Technology
 > Phone: 818 354 2903
 > driver@jpl.nasa.gov
 > 

Re: XFS?

[Samuel Flory]

Bryan Whitehead wrote:

>>
>
> What blows my mind (from someone that only watches kernel development) 
> is how one project, XFS, a filesystem basically "done" is excluded 
> from the mainline kernel while ReiserFS is getting a "complete rewrite 
> from scratch".
>
> Maybe I don't get it cause I'm just watching... ;)
>

  Keep in mind Linus ignored reiserfs for a long time and then just 
merged it in.  I think it was 2.4.1 or so.

Re: XFS?

[Bill Davidsen]

On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Nikita Danilov wrote:

> Then you missed "reiserfs inclusion into the kernel" soap opera.
> 
> And besides, reiserfs in mainline to no extent means reiser4 in mainline
> (unfortunately).

No, that's probably a good thing. I don't care how good any programming
team might be, an implementation written from scratch probably should burn
in for a while before going in anywhere it might be used for production.

And with all respect to the group, a 4th rewite from scratch in only a few
years suggests that the ratio of coding to designing is pretty high.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.

Re: XFS?

[Hans Reiser]

Bill Davidsen wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Nikita Danilov wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Then you missed "reiserfs inclusion into the kernel" soap opera.
>>
>>And besides, reiserfs in mainline to no extent means reiser4 in mainline
>>(unfortunately).
>>    
>>
>
>No, that's probably a good thing. I don't care how good any programming
>team might be, an implementation written from scratch probably should burn
>in for a while before going in anywhere it might be used for production.
>
>And with all respect to the group, a 4th rewite from scratch in only a few
>years suggests that the ratio of coding to designing is pretty high.
>
>  
>
Version 3 came out in 1998 or so, and large software projects should be, 
but rarely are, rewritten from scratch every 5 years.  If you want to 
object to XFS, object that it hasn't been rewritten in recent times.

As for the notion that the more designing you do, the less rewriting you 
need to do, it is a bit like the belief that the better your scientific 
theories the less you need to perform experiments.

Projects that are no longer attempting rewrites of their cores are dead 
in their soul, and their authors should pass them on to someone younger.

That said, version 4 will be followed by semantic enhancements and 
distributed filesystem work, as I finally have in version 4 a storage 
layer good enough that I can move mostly to the tasks that first 
interested me about FS design.  Most of the stuff that needs improvement 
in the version 4 storage layer can be done as new plugins, or so I 
fondly hope.;-)

Hans

Re: XFS?

[Bill Davidsen]

On Fri, 13 Sep 2002, Hans Reiser wrote:

> Bill Davidsen wrote:

> >No, that's probably a good thing. I don't care how good any programming
> >team might be, an implementation written from scratch probably should burn
> >in for a while before going in anywhere it might be used for production.
> >
> >And with all respect to the group, a 4th rewite from scratch in only a few
> >years suggests that the ratio of coding to designing is pretty high.

> As for the notion that the more designing you do, the less rewriting you 
> need to do, it is a bit like the belief that the better your scientific 
> theories the less you need to perform experiments.

Exactly so. I spent several decades doing software development at GE's
Corporate R&D Center, and I had ample proof that both of those things are
true. I think the phrase you want in English is "fewer experiments you
need to perform," but you did see the principle.
 
> Projects that are no longer attempting rewrites of their cores are dead 
> in their soul, and their authors should pass them on to someone younger.

Hear that, Linus? Off to the retirement home with you unless you "rm *"
your source tree and "go back to Baltimore and start over again as a
virgin." Actually I think that Linux is an example of major software
designed from the start to be rewritten in parts and to evolve as a whole.
no clean sheet of paper needed.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.