Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 21:35:19 -0500 From: David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Mikhail Teterin <mi+mx@aldan.algebra.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: the current status of nullfs, unionfs Message-ID: <20050310023518.GA11712@VARK.MIT.EDU> In-Reply-To: <200503091838.06322.mi%2Bmx@aldan.algebra.com> References: <200503091838.06322.mi%2Bmx@aldan.algebra.com>
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On Wed, Mar 09, 2005, Mikhail Teterin wrote: > Hello! > > The respected manual contain dire warnings, but the Google search suggests, > the situation is not *that* gloomy. > > For example, according to http://kerneltrap.org/node/652 , nullfs was used on > Bento-cluster two years ago in 2003. > > Is anybody working on this file-systems? Any plans, rumours? Nullfs works better than unionfs. Unionfs worked well in 4.X. Despite numerous minor bugs such as being unable to cope with FIFOs, several people have reported using it quite successfully on production systems. However, unionfs no longer works quite as well in 5.X or -CURRENT. There are several reasons for this: 1. Nobody seems to have both the time and interest to maintain it. 2. Developers can't be expected to prevent regressions in something that's unsupported. 3. There are a couple of people who always respond to questions about unionfs with comments along the lines of: ``It's broken, so we won't help you. Go away and don't tell us if you find any bugs.'' There's some pretty low-hanging fruit in terms of nits to fix. See the PR database if you're interested in helping, and don't let anyone scare you away. ;-) > What about the `union' option to regular mounts? Is that safe to use? Last I checked, it was very broken, but I'm not sure.
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