[KLUG Members] New BSware-PRO this week with XFS 1.0.1 (extra)

[Bryan J. Smith]

"Bryan J. Smith" wrote:
> But you forgot one category ... "features."

Now I forgot 2 more categories:  "conversion" and "utilities"

Conversion:

Ext3:  Both upgrade from and downgrade to Ext2 ("reversable")
ReiserFS:  Upgrade from Ext2 (not "reversable")
XFS:  No conversion option
JFS:  No conversion option

So XFS is a "bit harder to do" on an existing system.  But I move
partitions and data all the time, so it can be done (given time). 
Ext3 conversion is simple and quick, because Ext3 is just Ext2 with
a journal file.  ReiserFS can upgrade from Ext2, although it takes
awhile.

Small additional note:
ReiserFS' internal structure is in-flux, which means when you
upgrade your kernel/ReiserFS version, it will upgrade ReiserFS as
well.  This is one of the reasons I don't like ReiserFS, the
structure is NOT "stabilized."  Now the stock kernel 2.4.x releases
are supposed to be (a requirement from Linus), but I've heard there
are still some changes.  So you have to be careful when using a boot
disk, or a kernel that has an earlier version of ReiserFS than your
filesystem.

Utilities:

This is where I love XFS.  You get not only "mkfs.xfs" (which even
does some nice checking so you will not overwrite an existing
filesystem -- something I wish mkfs.ext2 would do!!!), "fsck.xfs"
(which may call "repair_xfs"), but you get "xfsdump" which preserves
your ACL info in backups.  This is _very_important_ for production
backups.  Then you have the "acl" program (which could be a bit
better in parameters, but it works well) and there are also other
utilities with extra goodies in "beta" like a full filesystem editor
(xfsed -- like ext2ed) and a data-storage managment interface (based
on the DMAPI standard -- great for high-end filers/NAS usage).

ReiserFS' utilities are improving, basically because they sucked and
were minimal not too long ago.  But I've seen "reiserfsck" take a
filesystem that just had some "problems" with a few files and toast
the whole thing so it could not be mounted (this just happened to
someone on JAXLUG last week).  And because the utility names are not
name/function "standardized" like every other filesystem on Linux,
they don't work with most of the scripts/front-ends.  Again,
non-traditional UNIX focus results in such issues -- although I *DO*
believe ReiserFS *IS* the future of filesystems on workstations and
niche appliances.

-- TheBS

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith  mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org  chat:thebs413
Absolute Value Systems, Inc.        http://www.linux-wlan.org
SmithConcepts, Inc.              http://www.SmithConcepts.com