Subject: XFS and NetBSD [was Re: News & Installation ideas]
To: None <port-sgimips@netbsd.org>
From: Steve Rikli <sr@genyosha.net>
List: port-sgimips
Date: 10/05/2001 09:39:33
Ian Cooper wrote:
> 
> I think that it would be very worthwhile to port XFS to NetBSD.  Besides
> for compatibility purposes, isn't XFS a pretty well-engineered filesystem?
> Something worth offering as an alternative to FFS or UFS?  XFS is
> journaled (like reiserfs or ext3), right?

Yup.  Just say no to fsck'ing.  ;-)  Though I can't comment on how "like"
reiserfs et al are to XFS.

It nearly blew my mind the first time I powercycled an SGI Origin2000
with my first 1.2TB filesystem and it just happily rebooted -- happened
so fast I didn't even have a chance to go out back for a smoke.  ;)

I'd had XFS on other SGI kit (some of it also very big, but not TB big)
before, so I knew that's what was supposed to happen, but it was still
a pretty cool thing to watch.

IIRC though, from reading freebsd-fs et al, there *may* be outstanding
src license issues -- i.e. I believe SGI released XFS src under GPL.
The discussion I read in the newsgroups seemed to indicate that might
be a bit of a tangle in porting to *BSD .

cheers,
sr.


> Just a thought.
> 
> > > > So ARCS can't boot FFS? How about porting XFS to NetBSD? Couldn't
> > > > be that hard (tm). That would make life... erm... this thing much
> > > > easier.
> > >
> > > ... of course you're welcome to help out! When are you done?
> > > :)
> >
> > IIRC, the Linux port took 9 months... and there were SGI engineers
> > working on that project... ;-)
> > Of course, it would be easier to redo, now that the Linux code is
> > available.
> >
> > - Michael


-- 
|| Steve Rikli              |||                                         ||
|| Systems Administrator    ||| Misanthropology, n.:  The study of why  ||
||                          ||| so many people are so damn stupid.      ||
|| sr@genyosha.net          |||                                         ||