XFS: A high-performance
journaling file system
URL: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/

Ever had to wait and wait while Linux `fsck's a big filesystem after a crash, power failure or just routine verification ?

Ever wanted to support terabytes of databases, tens of thousands of files per directory, 64-bit of everything in the filesystem, with high reliability and high performance ?

Ever wondered how far a filesystem can scale assuming the rest of the kernel can? How many CPUs can actually write to the filesystem at the same time without interfering with each other?

At the Atlanta Linux Showcase, SGI presented the following paper on the port of XFS to Linux:

• Porting the SGI XFS File System to Linux (October 1999)
  

At the 6th Linux Kongress & the Linux Storage Management Workshop (LSMW) in Germany in September, 1999, SGI had a few presentations including the following:

• SGI's port of XFS to Linux (September 1999)
  
• Overview of DMF (September 1999)
  

At the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in August 1999, SGI published:

• An Open Source XFS data sheet (August 1999)
  
• An IRIX-XFS data sheet (July 1999)
  
• Some initial XFS source code copylefted with the GNU GPL license (Selected IRIX XFS routines that implement XFS journaling)
• Selected original 1993 XFS design documents
• An XFS white paper from the 1996 USENIX conference.

This initial publication of excerpts of XFS source code indicates SGI's commitment to port XFS to Linux as GPL code. This code can be freely used with Linux, without the worry of violating the GPL terms by mixing copylefted GPL and copyrighted non-GPL code in Linux. It also shows some interesting code (originally developed for IRIX) which implements the XFS journaling techniques.

SGI programmers are cleaning the XFS code of legal encumbrances and porting it to Linux. SGI is working with universities, European and American companies, and Government laboratories which have volunteered experienced Linux and filesystem programmers and other resources to help SGI in this Open Source porting process. The bazaar is opening for XFS and the Open Source process is working to accelerate time to market while increasing functionality and reliability.

Please bear with us as we finish these processes so we can publish a full set of buildable and testable Open Source Linux XFS source code.

You can also check out the following:

• The Original XFS white paper, back from the early days it didn't yet have quota support. Yes, it has it now.
• Press release #1: SGI Contributes World's Most Scalable File System Technology to Open Source Community
• Some related discussions on the kernel mailing list.
• A Linux World article