[GTALUG] From BTRFS to what?

[Steve Petrie, P.Eng.]

Greetings To GTALUG,

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anthony de Boer via talk" <talk at gtalug.org>
To: "Alvin Starr via talk" <talk at gtalug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2017 6:33 PM
Subject: Re: [GTALUG] From BTRFS to what?


> Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
>> On 09/05/2017 09:42 AM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
>> >  ...

<snip>

>> Debian and Ubuntu don't seem to have the same support offerings but I
>> could be wrong on that point.
>
> Debian at least is a volunteer organization and you can't wave the
> corporate Amex at them.  They're generally quite reasonable at issuing
> fixes to CVE issues and their stuff Just Works but if you want to be
> spoon-fed you have to pick up the spoon in your own hand, as it were.
>

As a Windows XP "orphan" on an ancient Dell desktop, who is now escaping 
from the Microsoft Boa Constrictor, by switching to debian Linux on a 
new custom-built PC (parts specified but not yet built), So it's good to 
have my choice of debian confirmed as a good one.

<snip>

>
> I hope nobody is looking at redoing their root filesystems in any sort 
> of
> stampede to a different filesystem.  The choice of filesystem usually
> runs for the lifetime of an install, and when Btrfs became ready for
> prime-time I used it in a few non-core systems I was setting up, and 
> it's
> been happily working.  Certainly I'd not now try to swim upstream by
> using it on an RH/CentOS installation, but Debian and Gentoo are still
> happy with it.  But the vast majority of Linux systems I've built have
> had ext2/3/4.
>

Rignt on about ext2/3/4. After much research, my design for the linux 
disk drive partitioning for the desktop PC uses a blend of all three: 
ext2, ext3, ext4.

<snip>

* * *
* * *

Regarding more esoteric filesystems along hte lines of: btrfs and zfs.

In another project -- a website -- I plan to start up the website using 
debian Linus ext4 under a cloud-hosted QEMU / KVM vistual server.

But I also have experimented with a very interesting BSD-flavoured *nix 
called DragonFlyBSD (DFLY), again running on a cloud-hosted QEMU / KVM 
vistual server.

My research indicates that DFLY has two major attractions:

1. DFLY seems to be a very high-performance os (particularly its network 
stack). But this is based on comments by other DFLY users, not on my 
personal experience.

2. DFLY offers its own advanced filesystem HAMMER1 (to distinguish the 
current production-ready HAMMER from the new HAMMER2 currently under 
development). HAMMER1 offers may features of advanced file systems (e.g. 
snapshot).

DFLY (and HAMMER!) seems to have an enthusiastic (but very small) user 
base.

One interesting quirk about DFLY: Although DFLY is primarily aimed at 
the physical server hardware market, there are sometimes calls for help 
on the email discussion forum, from courageous DFLY tire-kickers who are 
installing DFLY on personal computers / workstations (especially laptop 
/ notebook computerrs). Seemingly becaue DFLY is so very resource 
efficient it can use otherwise obsolete underpowered hardware. The big 
struggles these DFLY notebook users have, seem to be with getting video 
and other peripherals working.

* * *
* * *

In reference to advanced filesystems, I am wondering about HAMMER1 in 
the context of Linux:

1. Occasionally, there is mention on the DFLY email forum, of the idea 
of porting HAMMER to Linux, but but obviously this would be a huge 
undertaking and not necessarily one with a happy ending.

2. Would there be some way to use a (dedicated server / virtual server) 
DFLY + HAMMER1 setup as a network-addressable filesystem for Linux? Get 
the operational and reliability benefits of DFLY+HAMMER but run them in 
their purely native mode.

Steve

>
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> Anthony de Boer
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