linux-kernel - Re: [Jfs-discussion] Should we orphan JFS?

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Message-ID: <20230119080532.crn7wzo4jz5x5ng3@tibus.st>
Date:   Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:05:32 +0100
From:   Stefan Tibus <stefan.tibus@....de>
To:     Andreas Dilger <adilger@...ger.ca>
Cc:     Dave Kleikamp <dave.kleikamp@...cle.com>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        jfs-discussion@...ts.sourceforge.net,
        Harald Arnesen <harald@...gtun.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Jfs-discussion] Should we orphan JFS?

Hi all,

While I am mostly an ordinary user running Linux on my own machines at
home, I must say that I have been a happy user of JFS from quite early
on on all my Linux installations, for which I use the Debian distro. I
am also using it on external HDDs and SSDs. In the past I have also been
administrator for a few workgroup servers at my university for about 10
years and there we have transitioned from EXT2 and EXT3 to JFS on LVM at
some point. Only recently I have started using BTRFS because of its
additional features on my newest PC. However, I would not make that
transition on older PCs with less resources. And it is some hassle to
convert all existing filesystems to something else.

I cannot provide hard facts like performance or so for the decision to
use JFS. My first contact with journaling file systems had been on a few
AIX (3.x/4.x) machines and later on with JFS on OS/2. So having started
off based on the code of JFS for OS/2 certainly contributed to the
initial level of trust when giving JFS on Linux a try versus EXT4 and it
didn't let me down.

From my perspective it would be sad seeing it removed while other much
older filesystems (or other features) are retained. But I also know that
in the end it depends on the capability, availability and willingness of
developers to maintain it. And, frankly speaking, I really do not know
how much effort it is to keep the code compatible to new kernel
versions.

So this is my vote against orphaning JFS. I still think it is a good
filesystem and certainly useful on systems with less resources where one
would probably not use BTRFS, ZFS or so. But whatever the final decision
will be, I would like to thank you all for contributing to JFS and
keeping it running over the past >20 years.

Best regards
Stefan

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 05:09:10AM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Jan 13, 2023, at 08:15, Dave Kleikamp <dave.kleikamp@...cle.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 1/13/23 7:08AM, Harald Arnesen wrote:
> >> Christoph Hellwig [13/01/2023 06.42]:
> >>> Hi all,
> >>>
> >>> A while ago we've deprecated reiserfs and scheduled it for removal.
> >>> Looking into the hairy metapage code in JFS I wonder if we should do
> >>> the same.  While JFS isn't anywhere as complicated as reiserfs, it's
> >>> also way less used and never made it to be the default file system
> >>> in any major distribution.  It's also looking pretty horrible in
> >>> xfstests, and with all the ongoing folio work and hopeful eventual
> >>> phaseout of buffer head based I/O path it's going to be a bit of a drag.
> >>> (Which also can be said for many other file system, most of them being
> >>> a bit simpler, though).
> >> The Norwegian ISP/TV provider used to have IPTV-boxes which had JFS on the hard disk that was used to record TV programmes.
> >> However, I don't think these boxes are used anymore.
> >
> > I know at one time it was one of the recommended filesystems for MythTV. I don't know of any other major users of JFS. I don't know if there is anyone familiar with the MythTV community that could weigh in.
> >
> > Obviously, I haven't put much effort into JFS in a long time and I would not miss it if it were to be removed.
>
> I've used MythTV for many years but haven't seen any particular recommendations for JFS there. Mainly ext4 and XFS are the common filesystems to follow the main distros (Ubuntu in particular).
>
> Cheers, Andreas
>
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