A short digression on FOSS (Re: understanding speculative preallocation)

[Eric Sandeen]

On Jul 28, 2013, at 10:38 PM, Keith Keller <kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:

> On 2013-07-29, Dave Chinner <david at fromorbit.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The "version" of XFS that you are running is that of the
>> kernel you are running. i.e. 2.6.32-279.x.y or 2.6.32-358.x.y.
> 
> Can't you fairly easily replace a kernel module with a different version
> using something like DKMS?  I feel like I did that with xfs a few months
> ago.  If accurate, then it's theoretically possible to run a different
> version of the xfs kernel module than the running kernel version.  (And
> if I'm misremembering then there really is no spoon!)
> 
In general, no.  There are a lot of moving parts that interface with the filesystem - one does not simply drop fs/xfs from, say, kernel 3.2 into a 2.6.32 kernel.

Ninjas like Dave can do it for an enterprise distro kernel if it benefits customers, but the back porting and testing is very much a nontrivial task.

-Eric


> --keith
> 
> -- 
> kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
> 
> 
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