The (unstable and development-oriented only) filesystem Btrfs version 0.14 has been released. "Btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. Initially developed by Oracle, Btrfs is licensed under the GPL and open for contribution from anyone."
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Member since:2005-07-24
No. That is a mischaracterization. Btrfs is intended to work closely *with* dm and lvm. A certain minimum amount of functionality is duplicated between btrfs and the current dm and lvm where absolutely necessary. Read what Chris says about this:
http://lwn.net/Articles/265533/
Edited 2008-04-30 17:59 UTC
Member since:2005-07-08
So? What makes ZFS completely unsuitable for Linux is the fact that it's not just a filesystem - not even a "filesystem + volume manager". ZFS is a complete software stack from the VFS to the storage driver.
This is why ZFS supports io priorities and UFS-solaris doesn't: They have the "old" IO stack and the "new" ZFS stack. In the Linux kernel this would not be acceptable at all. When Linux develops a new piece of the IO stack such the io priorities, it must work for all the filesystems. If that piece only works with a filesystem, it'd be considered misdesigned and would not be merged. This is why in Linux you have IO priorities support not only for a given filesystem like ext3, but also for filesystems like FAT - for any kind of filesystems, in fact the io priority thing doesn't interacts so much with the filesystems, but with the block devices.
So if ZFS were GPL, some parts would be need to be redesigned to be merged in Linux. BTRFS, in the other hand, is just a filesystem that plugs cleanly in the Linux design.
Member since:2006-01-19
In general I don't think you are incorrect. However, I don't think this is literally true. For instance, I am pretty sure that each major Linux FS implements journaling using its own private subsystem. There is a standard subsystem now, JBD, but only ext3 uses it.
Moral of the story is, if the right political factions are behind it, anything goes.
Member since:
2005-11-15
I don't think that argument holds, since Btrfs is busy copying all the "layer violation" features from ZFS such as RAID.