Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 02:09:16 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@ns.caldera.de> Cc: Dennis Berger <Dennis.Berger@nipsi.de>, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG, opengfs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: Porting a new filesystem to FreeBSD Message-ID: <3BA5BDBC.107DC520@mindspring.com> References: <3BA4B507.CC70ECD4@nipsi.de> <20010916140843.A21982@xor.obsecurity.org> <3BA52C79.E1E247F5@mindspring.com> <3BA5419F.BF0C3E70@nipsi.de> <3BA555D8.D2C53387@mindspring.com> <20010917084023.A13990@caldera.de> <3BA5AF53.EE87658F@mindspring.com> <20010917104822.B23758@caldera.de>
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Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > > We (the OpenGFS project) have spend about ten times as much time > > > just to fix the horrible implementation bugs in GFS, not to mention# > > > that it also has a lot of design problems. > > > > I'm only worried about the drivers for the weird hardware, and > > the interoperability issues. > > There is no hardware driver. You just need a scsi subsystem that can > handle 16 byte cmds if the host controller can handle it. (And of course > a controller that actually implements this specific commands). This disagrees with a discussion I had off list, as to the use and availableility of DLOCK, and the firmness of the SCSI III standard. The GFS people are using Matt Jacob's fiberchannel driver, and a network based distributed lock manager. I'm really not interested in GFS for it's logging properties alone, when run on a local disk (see my posting on crash recovery, also in this thread). > > Unfortunately, from the web page, it has the GPL issues which will > > preclude using it as a boot FS, or shipping a CDROM which would > > install to it as the root FS type, by way of user selection > > (preferred) or by default (annoying to commercial users). At least > > I can actually use the code... > > The first yes, the second not. Tell me how I can distribute a binary, where it is impossible for all the code to be under GPL because some of the code is under another license, yet statically link it with GPL'ed code? I _can not_ ship a CDROM which would install to it as the root FS type. Nor can I create a FreeBSD bootloader, since reading the kernel off the dosk would require linking ot with GFS code in the libstand -- something I can not do, because of the license conflict there, as well. I can't even do it as a user selection, unless I compile the kernel to an MFS locally -- and doing that is considered a "no no", or I would just distribute all GPL'ed code as ANDF code (using TenDRA), and then link it at install time, and totally igonre the GPL as an irrelevancy. > I didn't suggest that you use the code (once we're done with cleaning > it up it won't be the same anyway), but implement a new kernel part, > sharing the format and protocol with OpenGFS (and current Sistina > GFS, but I suspect they will change their format as often as the LVM > one). > As you mentioned above that you write almost asleep it shouldn't be > too difficult :) Do you have documentation for the layout and theory of operation, said documentation not itself being GPL'ed, but instead, fully public domain and/or published with perpetual rights granted for derivative works? I could code to that from scratch rather easily; on the other hand, it kind of makes no sense to have the code and not be able to use it -- if I did it, it would be the very first time that GPL'ed code had been successfully used as a reference implementation, and you probably could claim that it was the design documentation, not the code, which acted as the reference. 8-). If someone would write a fiberchannle driver, and tell me where I can buy cheap hardware, I could probably write a GFS-like FS from scratch; but it's not something I'm interested in taking on, if it means that there's nothing to run it on but local disks, when I get there (ugh!). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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