On September 22, SGI released the beta version of its high-end XFS file system ported to Linux®. As a leading supporter of Linux and the open source movement, SGI is providing business-critical infrastructure for Linux through porting such solid and high-performance software as XFS to Linux and making it available to the community.
Existing file systems for Linux entail significant limitations in scalability and stability. Unlike other journaled file systems currently under development, XFS is a mature technology that has been proven on thousands of IRIX systems for over six years. It is widely recognized as the industry's leading high-performance file system. SGI has now optimized XFS for Linux users, providing the same flexible, high-capacity, and reliable file system as before. Features such as instantaneous recovery from disk crashes and the ability to support extremely large disk farms will establish XFS as the production quality file system for Linux. Furthermore, porting XFS to Linux is helping advance some of the Linux kernel infrastructure such as the VM subsystem and the block device interface.
For a comparison of journaled filesystems, see the article Journal File Systems in issue 55 of Linux Gazette.
For participation in the Beta program, please contact:
The XFS beta is available to SGI's customers via a ProPack distribution, and is also being made available as a patch against linux-2.4.0-test5, and as a set of RPMs.
Before installing the XFS filesystem for Linux, you should look over the XFS Beta Release Caveats for a list of limitations, requirements, and special instructions for this release.
Step by step instructions are available for the following installations: