Re: Filesystems -- was: Linux in a School envrionment

[Adam Tauno Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>I agree in part ... if Linux had an administration tool simmilar to
>>Nwadmin it would be a smashing success ... but the true beauty of
>>NetWare is
>>NDS powered by a btreive database engine ... giving you the ability to
>>set>file rights for a single user ( not group dependent) 
>That is dependent on the filesystem.  I don't think ext2 supports it.

It does not.  But the trustee project (a kernel patch) lets you apply a ACL to
any file system resource.  IMHO it makes more sense to have the ACL system
abstracted from the filesystem so it applies evenly to all file resources,  but
appently such thinking is not very popular with file-system developers (they may
have a good reason, I just don't know what it is).

>However, I've been doing some reading about XFS lately, and XFS 
>supports ACL's (Access Control Lists  -- setting permissions on 
>individual files on a per-user basis).
>Quote from SGI:  http://linux-xfs.sgi.com/projects/xfs/index.html 
>"...the XFS filesystem for Linux has made significant progress
> since its Beta release in September 2000. Although there are
> still some features to be finalized, the Beta code is currently
> stable in a majority of normal environments. We welcome and
> encourage interested users to try out the code aggressively in
> your test environments so that we can work through the final
> stage of the development and bug fixes to meet your production
> needs. ...
> High reliability and performance from journaling and other
> advanced algorithms ...
> Sub-second filesystem recovery after crashes or power failures 
> (never wait for long fscks) ..."
> XFS appears to have some advantages over ReiserFS & ext3 too:
>   A)  No kNFSd issues (unlike ReiserFS)
>   B)  Runs on kernel 2.4 (unlike Ext3)
>   C)  Designed for RH7/GLibC2.2 (LFS/no 2GB limitations)

Hallelujah!

>   D)  Already proven on Irix (big one!)

That is big,  on-disk structures are very unlikely to change.

>   E)  Complete replacement utilities (in-line with Ext2)
>   F)  The most comprehensive features of the 4 JFS for Linux
> PLUS, SGI has modified the Redhat 7 Anaconda installer to
> include support for XFS in the install process!!!  
> Combine that with 2.4 kernel RPM's with XFS support, and we 
> could make a new and improved "BSware-PRO" edition!  :-)    
> Any interest?

Me! Me! Me!  Actually I'd want it for RH7.1 (currently wolverine beta), as I
don't intend to go through upgrading again until then.  My box at home is still
RH6.2.  The performance of ext2 for a couple of things I do is becoming a mild
annoyance.

On an aside note, has anyone done any upgrades on boxes containing Resiserfs
paritions, etc..., that RH's installer doesn't support?  How smoothly does that
go?  (All such paritions for me are "non-critical", /var/spool/squid, etc..., 
but I haven't done an upgrade on those boxes yet.)

And how does one backup a filesystem containing ACLs?

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW.
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505