On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Paul Lussier wrote: > Sure [XFS is] new for Linux, but IMO, that's better than completely new > for everything.
Well, in all fairness, ext3 is hardly completely new for everything. They added journaling to an existing, well-tested implementation of ext2. Which is not to say I trust ext3, either. :-) > XFS has been out in the field and tested by thousands of people for over > 7 years. All they need to do is port to Linux. Oh, that's all. As I understand it, Linux's filesystem layer is closely intertwined with the caching layer and the memory manager. Many other things interact with it as well. Porting a filesystem isn't like porting a network card driver. There can be, have been, and may still be subtle bugs in all that code, especially when you get into locking and race conditions and SMP, oh my. A design specification, and the implementation of that design, are two completely different things. Associating one with the other is a serious error. Again, I am not saying XFS is crap. What I am saying that even if God Himself wrote the XFS code for IRIX, it remains to be proven that the XFS code for Linux is equally robust. > The that's a far simpler task than writing a file system of any kind > from the ground up ... I am not so sure even that much is true. You could probably fit the description of Microsoft's FAT filesystem on the back of a napkin, for example. :-) >> - 2.4 kernel only > > Not as major a problem as it was before they ended the VM-of-the-week > games :) Yah, instead, they released a kernel that trashes your filesystem if you try to unmount it. Now *there's* a big improvement. :-( I'm gonna stick with 2.2 for a few (dozen) more releases, I think. :-) >> - Can only grow (not shrink) the filesystem > > Okay, I've got to ask. When have you ever been given the opportunity to > *shrink* a file system? LVM and separate filesystems for organizational purposes. It also comes in handy when migrating from one filesystem to another. I am sure there are other uses that we may encounter as well. :) -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
