A Short History of Btrfs 241
diegocgteleline.es writes "Valerie Aurora, a Linux file system developer and ex-ZFS designer, has posted an article with great insight on how Btrfs, the file system that will replace Ext4, was created and how it works. Quoting: 'When it comes to file systems, it's hard to tell truth from rumor from vile slander: the code is so complex, the personalities are so exaggerated, and the users are so angry when they lose their data. You can't even settle things with a battle of the benchmarks: file system workloads vary so wildly that you can make a plausible argument for why any benchmark is either totally irrelevant or crucially important. ... we'll take a behind-the-scenes look at the design and development of Btrfs on many levels — technical, political, personal — and trace it from its origins at a workshop to its current position as Linus's root file system.'"
So, (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh wee sun's sloppy seconds. (Score:2, Insightful)
That argument isn't actually based on the technical merits, and thus doesn't make any sense..
Just because a Real OS [microsoft.com] features a Real FS [wikipedia.org] backed up by a real company [microsoft.com], doesn't necessarily mean the FS or OS are any good on technical merits compared to a REAL project [linux.org] licensed under a REAL free software [gnu.org] license [gnu.org] backed up by a REAL community and supported by a REAL foundation [linuxfoundation.org].
Re:So, (Score:3, Insightful)
I had this exact problem very recently.
If my data was important, I should have been using ECC RAM.
Re:Looks promising (Score:1, Insightful)
What, really? Who the fuck writes a file system implementation in GPL!? That's as bad as Sun!
Re:total gay (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish the parent hadn't been modded down. He makes a point that should be addressed.
I've lost data on every file system that I've ever used, including NTFS, and the highly touted ReiserFS. Nothing guarantees the security of your data. The nearest you can come to data security, is to backup, backup, and backup again. Those people and organizations that keep regular backups seldom lose data. However, even those people can lose data in the event of a physical disaster (fire, flood, theft, being hit by a humongous meteorite) which is why off-site backups are important.
That said - IMHO, a journaling file system is an important first step to data security. NTFS and Ext3 are about equal, in my experience. Turning off caching features is an important second step. A power outage before data is written to disk, and/or while data is being written results in corruption in all current file systems. The important thing is, if data is mission critical, you want it written IMMEDIATELY, not floating around in RAM.
And, finally, you NEED redundant backups. Anyone who fails to make backups WILL LOSE data, eventually.
Re:Yet another "modern" FS without undelete... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you use such shenigans? Simply make the filesystem mark deleted files as "hide from directory listing, and really delete only if you need the space". Then add a couple of syscalls to examine these "recyclable" files and restore them to normal status.
Now, there are a number of corner cases that need to be thought out - such as what happens if you delete a file/directory and then create a new one with the same name - but the principle is simple enough: don't really delete files, merely mark them as deletable/recyclable/harvestable/condemned/dying.
Re:Linus', not Linus's. (Score:3, Insightful)
In spoken English, you generally pronounce the second 's' (unless you are a pedant of some sort), so it would stand to reason that the second 's' should remain. There is another motivation: the "'s" is actually a clitic that attaches to phrases (usually noun phrases) and is thus a separate word, not a part of the word it is attached to. As such, it should always be spelled out (as it is always pronounced).