This all fills me with fear and trepidation. I have a dual-xeon box that was running an older 2.4 kernel, trying to use ext3, but got tired of kernel panics. With all the good vibes around ext3 in general, I assumed that the presence of 4 hyperthreads was a problem that most people didn't face. Soo....
I'm bringing this machine up with gentoo and the big data partition is xfs. No problems so far, but I'm worried. I'm using a 2.6 kernel, perhaps close to the bleeding edge (I don't remember exactly how it was described, but most were 2.4 when I started this). Wish me luck... ++ kevin --- Collins Richey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > Net Llama! <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > >>>>Just to stire the pot, and play devil's advocate, > i will say > > > >that>>>it hasn't achiveved respectability in alot of > groups. There > > > >are>>>some heated attacks on gentoo on the XFS > mailign list, and > > > >i've>>>seen some snide remarks on LKML as well. > > > >>>> > > > >>> > > > > >> > > > >>The majority of the snide remarks come from people > who have looked > > > >at>Gentoo's special kernel patches and been > revulsed. There's a > > > >>disturbing corellation between people reporting > unreproducable XFS > > > >>filesystem corruption and using Gentoo's kernels. > > > >> > > I did a little research on both the XFS comments about > gentoo and on the > gentoo-user list. Here's my take on the situation: > > 1. Gentoo offers all sorts of kernels, from plain vanilla > to every sort > of experimental kernel imaginable. There aren't any > current statistics, > but, if last year was any indication, a lot of people go > for the > experimental kernels. For me, the vanilla kernels are > good enough. > > 2. The most recent XFS complaints I could find about > gentoo were a > mixture of 2.6 32-bit and 64-bit users, and yes most of > these were > experimental kernels. There are only a handful of reports > from gentoo > users. > > 3. The XFS developers choose to ignore any reports using > an experimental > kernel. I'm of two minds about that approach. 1) Sounds > fine. It's more > difficult to analyze with extra patches. 2) The reports > aren't "my > kernel broke" but "my file system crapped out." If the > XFS code is > really fragile enough that the presence of some extra > patches is a > problem, then maybe some extra work needs to be done by > the developers. > I suspect that some of the reported problems are indeed > XFS bugs that > will go unsolved because the developers don't like to > deal with extra > patches. I haven't seen a lot of reports from ext3 users > on experimental > kernels saying "my file system crapped out.:- reiserfs > yes, even on > vanilla kernels. > > 4. The comments in the XFS postings complaining about > gentoo are about > as non-specific as you can get. "They include patches > they shouldn't and > they omit patches they should have." "Get an RH asap." It > would be nice > to have some real examples and some analysis of what the > presence / > absence of patches has to do with the filesystem layer. > Where's the > beef, i.e. the proof that the problem has anything to do > with extra > patches? Not all kernel patches affect the filesystem > layer. There's a > similar situation with "I don't like the version of > glibc/gcc your're > running." As above, no real information, no taking the > opportunity to > do advance work to deal with the glibc/gcc changes which > will just come > back to bite later with even more users, just griping. > > 5. I've ignored the comments about 2.4 kernels. In those > days XFS was > patch city. It should be a little easier for everyone now > that > XFS is in the kernel source tree. > > 6. The hard feelings go both ways. The gentoo developers > were burned > badly by an XFS server they were running a while ago, and > the XFS > developers hate to see problem reports from gentoo > because of the > experimental kernels. In an ideal world, there would be > more cooperation > and less animosity, but unfortunately the trend is toward > animosity. > Neither attitude is to be commended. > > In summary, gentoo is respected by a growing number of > users, but > only tolerated by a large number of others. End of story > for my part. > > Enjoy, > > -- > /\/\ > ( CR ) Collins Richey > \/\/ fly Independence Air - they run Linux > > > > _______________________________________________ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsub/Pause/Etc -> > http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general > ===== Dr. Kevin O'Gorman (805) 756-2986 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~kogorman _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub/Pause/Etc -> http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
