Re: NetBSD Wishlist

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost>]

From "Stefano Marinelli" <postnet%dragas.dyndns.org@localhost>:

> lso a complete ext2 (but better ext3) support could be enough. Most of
> recent Linux formatted devices can't be mounted on NetBSD, unless you
> specify a different default value.
> Almost any OS can mount and read/write on ext2/3 FSs, nowadays. So...
> ZFS is too much memory-hungry (and, if we want it in production, we need
> something better than the FreeBSD implementation...)

NetBSD 4.x and 5.x can't mount my Linux partition (ext2fs), formatted by Linux 
Slackware a few Slackware releases ago.  Maybe can't support the inode size.

FreeBSD 7.x could mount my Linux partition but produced an error message "Bad 
file descriptor" when I tried to read anything on the Linux partition.

FreeBSD 8.x can mount and read my Linux partition but truncated a file when I 
tried to edit one file on said partition with vi.  I was able to recover by 
editing and writing the file to a FAT32 partition and copying from Linux.  Rest 
of Linux file system was unscathed.

Linux can read BSD file system ufs but is limited by not being able to read 
FreeBSD disklabel.  NetBSD also can't read FreeBSD disklabel.

There has been discussion on freebsd-questions%freebsd.org@localhost emailing 
list about zfs not being ready for serious business.  In the current condition, 
I would not try zfs on FreeBSD.

There has been discussion on freebsd-questions%freebsd.org@localhost emailing 
list about zfs not being ready for serious business.  In the current condition, 
I would not try zfs on FreeBSD.

Both open-source and closed-source OSes (such as MS-Windows and Mac OS) may 
introduce updated, improved versions of their file systems that sacrifice 
compatibility with other OSes.

FreeBSD disklabels are for the slice (BIOS MBR partition) rather than the whole 
disk (as with NetBSD), and I've wondered if it might be better for NetBSD to 
adopt such a disklabel style.  FreeBSD disklabel older-style was like the 
present NetBSD style, for the whole disk.

I might want to install NetBSD-current on a USB stick if I decide not to burn 
my bridges on my hard-disk installation of NetBSD 5.1, if only to get a preview 
of NetBSD 6.0.

Tom