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Configuring and Installing the XFS Linux Kernel

After you have checked out or downloaded the XFS Linux patches, configure and install your kernel as usual. See The Linux Kernel HOWTO for detailed instructions, if necessary.

In your kernel configuration, you will need to enable:

XFS filesystem support (CONFIG_XFS_FS)
Page Buffer support (CONFIG_PAGE_BUF)

You may enable these options either as modules, or build them into the kernel. If you plan to use XFS as your root filesystem, then xfs must either be built into the kernel, or you must create an initial ramdisk (initrd) with the xfs module.

To generate an initial ramdisk image, run the command:

       mkinitrd /boot/initrd-kernelname.img kernelname

where kernelname refers to the new XFS kernel you have just installed - for example, to generate a ramdisk for the XFS 1.0.1 kernel, run the following command:

       mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.3-SGI_XFS_1.0.1.img 2.4.3-SGI_XFS_1.0.1

If you wish to migrate IRIX XFS disks to Linux you should enable:

Advanced partition selection (CONFIG_PARTITION_ADVANCED)
SGI partition support (CONFIG_SGI_PARTITION)

You will also need to upgrade the following system utilities to these versions or later:

When your new kernel is built and installed, you should update LILO, create a new ramdisk image if necessary, and you're ready to boot an XFS-capable kernel.

Creating the XFS tools

You will also need to compile and install the XFS userspace tools:

If you obtained your kernel as part of a complete development tree through a CVS checkout, the userspace tools are available in the cmd/ directory.

If you obtained your kernel from the XFS development tree patchfiles, you will need to download the latest development xfs command tarballs

If you obtained your kernel from the latest XFS release patchfiles, you will need to download the latest released xfs command tarballs

The following userspace tools are available:

acl

A command (chacl) to manipulate POSIX access control lists under Linux.

attr

An experimental command (attr) to manipulate extended attributes under Linux.

dmapi

Files required by system software using the Data Management API (DMAPI). Information on DMAPI in XFS is provided in The Data Management API (DMAPI) web page.

xfsdump

The xfsdump package contains xfsdump, xfsrestore and a number of other utilities for administering XFS filesystems.

xfsdump examines files in a filesystem, determines which need to be backed up, and copies those files to a specified disk, tape or other storage medium. It uses XFS-specific directives for optimizing the dump of an XFS filesystem, and also knows how to backup XFS extended attributes. Backups created with xfsdump are "endian safe" and can thus be transferred between Linux machines of different architectures and also between IRIX machines.

xfsrestore performs the inverse function of xfsdump; it can restore a full backup of a filesystem. Subsequent incremental backups can then be layered on top of the full backup. Single files and directory subtrees may be restored from full or partial backups.

xfsprogs

A set of commands to use the XFS filesystem, including mkfs.xfs.

After unpacking these files, if necessary, perform the following tasks in each source tree:

make configure
make
su root
make install

See the doc/INSTALL file in each package's source tree for more information about this process.

If you have a previous version of the XFS tools, you must upgrade and recompile against the new kernel headers.

If all this goes well, it's time to make a new XFS filesystem!

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