re[2]: Current Status ??

[Greg Freemyer <freemyer@NorcrossGroup.com>]

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@sgi.com