On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, Daniel Hammer wrote:
>I know that ReiserFS has some disadvantages too (no RAID support,
>no quota support, ... etc.). But including some patched kernel
Exactly.
>could also bring another effect, namely that lots of people
>(that do not apply patches themselves) could mess around with it
>and make bug-tracking records.
Absolutely. Since it is all GPL'd code, nothing is stopping
anyone at all from pre-applying the reiserfs patches and
redistributing the kernel tarballs, or even in RPM format. I
might consider doing it myself if nobody else is already and
there is enough demand. It will come with zero support though,
not even email answers..
>One could in advance exclude the ReiserFS-patched Kernel
>from any support and warn people from using it for mission
>critical task or any servers.
Not in a distribution. Unsupported stuff should not be included
in the main dist at all IMHO. Even putting it in a separate dir
will generate excessive support calls and emails from people who
can't understand that files in an /unsupported directory are
completely unsupported, not to mention wasting another 30Mb of
space on the CD. People would want i386, i586, i686 versions,
as well as all of the same for SMP too. Then someone else will
say "I want an ext3 patched kernel! Same as the reiserfs
one!" and that adds another 50Mb to the CD. Then someone will
want both reiserfs and ext3, and add your patch of the day to the
pile and you end up with a million permutations of kernels which
would end up exploding and some dummy would ignore the
"unsupported" comments and ask for support anyways. Not only
that, but they'd ask on these mailing lists as well, and the
right place would be on the reiserfs mailing lists. I'd
personally rather not see more bug reports for unsupported stuff
myself...
>Maybe one should give ReiserFS a chance even if some people in
>higher places (mostly deserved by knowledge and enthusiasm) do
>not like it.
I have debated this with myself for a while, and initially wanted
to see ReiserFS included by default as well. After being
enlightened with the various ramifications of it, drawbacks,
etc.. however I now believe strongly that it is very much only an
experimental filesystem that just happens to work pretty stable
for many people, but lacks many features that are needed for it
to be seriously included in the standard kernel or any
distribution shipped kernel - despite the fact that SuSe and
others ship it.
I don't believe in shoving code in that isn't ready "just so
people can use it" as that will result in EVERYONE eventually
shoving more and more crap in on top of the standard kernel, and
few if any people using the official kernel, and thus we will end
up with Microsoft quality.
The less people use experimental code that isn't ready for
primetime, the better. Once it is relied on, it is difficult to
remove or change without pissing off the masses of sysadmins that
expect that things wont change. Reiserfs changes a fair amount,
and I've seen people be very pissed that it isn't backward
compatible with itself. A VERY bad idea to support at this time
I believe.
On the other hand, it is excellent to apply yourself and play
away - knowing the warnings, etc.. You see, having it there by
default means people will use it and not know of the problems and
difficulties. Applying it yourself REQUIRES you understand what
you're doing and the pitfalls you may endure if you use the code.
It is not difficult at all however. If anyone has trouble with
applying the patch, email me, I'd be glad to offer help.
TTYL
--
Mike A. Harris - Person who hates snow, and might not see it anymore. ;o)
Linux advocate, Open source advocate | Copyright 2000 all rights reserved
======================================================================
#[Mike A. Harris bash tip #2 - custom colorized bash prompts]
# For a color prompt, put the following at the bottom of your ~/.bash_profile
TTYNAME=$(tty | sed -e 's/^\/dev\///' -e 's/^tty//');DRED=31;DGREEN=32
BROWN=33;DBLUE=34;DMAGENTA=35;DCYAN=36;GREY=37;DGREY=30\;1;RED=31\;1
GREEN=32\;1;YELLOW=33\;1;BLUE=34\;1;MAGENTA=35\;1;CYAN=36\;1;WHITE=37\;1
CLRUSER=$CYAN ; CLRHOST=$YELLOW # Set the user and host colors here
PS1="$TTYNAME \[\033[${CLRUSER}m\]\u\[\033[0;m\]"
export PS1="${PS1}@\[\033[${CLRHOST}m\]\h\\[\033[0;m\]:\w\$ "
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