[PlanetCCRMA] XFS file system support

[Mark Knecht]

Fernando,
   Great to see and hear you again. I hope the vacation was nice and that
you return relaxed.

   There is absolutely no rush on this, but I have a suspicion that XFS may
turn out to be a good file system for ardour or any other application that
uses large files and wants/needs journaling. I'm getting good results so far
with reiserfs, much better than ext3 in terms of xruns and what not. I read
on the web that XFS is better with large files than reiserfs. I don't know,
but would like to check it out.

   Unfortunately, testing it with the current kernel is beyond me, but it
may be possible. XFS can be loaded as a module, but only if non-standard
things are compiled into the 2.4 series kernel. If you and I can determine
what those are, then I'm happy to test that out as a module. Modules loads
are fine since this is just a mounted file system and not the primary system
disk. However, if you have to compile a new kernel anyway, then I don't see
any big reason not to just compile in everything.

   The XFS design team tells me that the 2.5 series kernels have XFS support
as standard in them if you want to turn it on.

   This all is just a bit beyond me. I have compiled kernels before, and am
very happy to do it myself, but I don't know how to apply the low latency
patches, nor do I know what other things you've chosen. If you can help me
understand that, then maybe I can help you by doing my own compiles and then
feeding back info to you.

   Whatever sounds good to you sounds good to me too. Let me know what you'd
like to try.

Thanks,
Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano [mailto:nando@ccrma.Stanford.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2002 11:18 AM
To: Mark Knecht
Cc: 'PlanetCCRMA (E-mail)'
Subject: RE: [PlanetCCRMA] XFS file system support


> OK, so now I'll place this request as a complete, down on my knees,
begging
> request that Planet.CCRMA support the XFS file system in a standard kernel
> release.
>
> PPLLEEAASSEE!!  ;;--))
>
> When is Fernando back anyway? It's too quiet here!!

Just started making some noises again :-)

I'll consider this for the next kernel I put online. I believe (but I
can't really remember) that xfs support was included not long ago in the
standard Linus kernel, if so it would not be a problem to compile the
proper modules during the build. Otherwise I don't think I'll support it,
I'm trying to keep the number of patches I have to manage to something
manageable (by one person).

-- Fernando