Steve,
Thanks for the feedback.
As to what I was thinking about relating to XFS 2.0's quality. Given that the
EA/ACL interface has obviously been changed at both the userland-kernel
interface and at the kernel-xfs driver interface, I am curious if this is
likely to introduce any instabilities in the first release, or if you believe
you have performed enough regression testing to be comfortable with the changes.
(Obviously I need to click on that "QA" link on your website. I'm off to do
that now.
Thanks Again,
Greg Freemyer
Internet Engineer
Deployment and Integration Specialist
The Norcross Group
www.NorcrossGroup.com
>> On Fri, 2002-02-22 at 11:24, Greg Freemyer wrote:
>> >
>> > I've just gotten interested in XFS because of its ACL support in the
>> metadata and via xfsdump/xfsrestore.
>> >
>> > I'm trying to figure out what its current status is, and what is likely
>> to happen over the next few months.
>> >
>> > Does the below sound correct:
>> >
>> > Current release (XFS v1.0.2):
>> > fairly stable, appears to be production quality
>> > Supports ACLs on disk and with xfsdump/xfsrestore.
>> > With xfsrestore a single file can be restored complete with its
>> associated ACL metadata.
>> > Uses a XFS specific interface to the kernel from userland to
>> manipulate ACL.
>> > Has trouble with LVM snapshots (maybe this is CVS code only).
>> CVS and the kernel patches have come a long way since 1.02 was released,
>> a lot of bugs have been fixed in the kernel and user space code which are
>> not in the original rpms.
>> LVM snapshots do appear to have some issues still, although I am
>> not sure what the current status really is on this one.
>> >
>> > XFS v2.0:
>> > Will be released when the new Linus approved EA interface is added
>> to the kernel.
>> > (I can't tell if this is 2.4.18, or 2.5.x)
>> > The filesystem layout itself will not change, but the userland tools
>> from V2.0 will not be compatible with a V1.0 kernel and vice-versa.
>> >
>> They will be compatible in all areas except acls and extended
>> attributes.
>> > Questions:
>> > Is the new EA API coming out in 2.4.18 the same as the one in 2.5.x?
>> yes.
>> >
>> > If so, how long after 2.4.18 is released do you expect XFS V2.0 to be
>> released? (days, weeks, months??)
>> Days - we have rc3 in a tree now, rc4 just came out and is really small.
>> >
>> > The first release of V2.0 will be what quality? (alpha, beta,
>> production??)
>> Well, in theory things keep getting better as we go along, so cvs should
>> be 'better' than the 1.02 release rpms. Regressions do happen, but in
>> general I would say we should be at or higher than the reliability level
>> of the original 1.02 release. I do not think there will be much 'extra'
>> testing going into this version if that is what you are asking.
>> >
>> > Is the 2.4.18 kernel likely to be of production quality? I have read
>> about a lot of problems in the whole 2.4.x series of kernels, but it
>> sounds like it is all coming together in the most recent kernels.
>> >
>> Things do seem to be getting better. For general linux things you pretty
>> much have to look at linux-kernel and judge for yourself.
>>
>> > Because the of the new standard EA interface, will V2.0 userland ACL
>> tools will be able to control both XFS and ext3 with the acl.bestbits.at
>> extensions.
>> That is the theory.
>> >
>> > Is star (http://acl.bestbits.at/backup.html) able to support XFS
>> complete with ACLs by using the Posix ACL interface. If not now, what
>> about with XFS V2.0?
>> >
>> I have no idea - it all depends on how star extracts data from the
>> filesystem, does it run on a live filesystem, or does it use the
>> block interface. If the former then it may work, if the latter then
>> no it will not work.
>> > What about xfsdump/xfsrestore and ext3 with ACL support?
>> xfsdump will not work on filesystems other than xfs - since it uses xfs
>> specific extensions to scan the filesystem. Restore should be able to
>> restore an xfs filesystem with acls to another acl enabled filesystem
>> type - I think.
>> >
>> > Does Amanda work well with xfsdump/xfsrestore? star?
>> >
>> Amanda works with xfsdump/restore, I cannot speak for star.
>> > In general, do you think XFS or ext3 with ACL extensions is a more
>> production ready environment. (I know your biased, but I would still
>> appreciate an answer.)
>> >
>> I will leave the answer to that to external people, all I can say is
>> that xfs has had more production time than ext3, but ext3 comes from
>> an existing linux filesystem which has had way more linux time
>> than xfs has.
>> I actually use both filesystems - since when testing radical xfs things
>> I want to be able to isolate things down to one filesystem and not have
>> to reinstall if things go bad.
>> Steve
>> --
>> Steve Lord voice: +1-651-683-3511
>> Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software email: lord@xxxxxxx
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