linux FFS kernel support

[alienlinux]

why is it every time i load a new distro i never find one that has default FFS support? why is it however that virtually/probably every distro out there comes ready to read proprietary FAT(FAT16), VFAT(FAT32) and NTFS partitions but not non-proprietary filesystems such as FFS?!?

*BSD are opensource too and they deserve to be treated with respect! i notice that when i plugged an old HD in, that had openbsd on it and tried to mount an ext3 FS it worked perfectly and i was able to get my data, so they aren't biased in that respect!

i am getting sick of recompiling the kernel just to make this simple change that has virtually no impact, if any at all, on the size/footprint of the kernel!

does anyone know of any distro's that come out the box with ffs support please?

[John A]

>why is it every time i load a new distro i never find one that has
>default FFS support?
Probably because FFS isn't very popular.

>why is it however that virtually/probably every distro out there comes
>ready to read proprietary FAT(FAT16), VFAT(FAT32) and NTFS partitions
Probably because FAT, VFAT, and NTFS are popular.

>*BSD are opensource too and they deserve to be treated with respect!
I'm sure that if Linux distro developers went out and found every obscure (but open source) filesystem, they would end up with a lot of unnecessary kernel bloat.

As for distros that come with FFS support "out of the box", sorry, I am not aware of any.

[alienlinux]

>why is it every time i load a new distro i never find one that has
>default FFS support?
Probably because FFS isn't very popular.

YOU HAVE O BE JOKING, how naive can you get, don't start trolling mate, your big head doesn't become you, if you can't talk sense, don't post at all

>why is it however that virtually/probably every distro out there comes
>ready to read proprietary FAT(FAT16), VFAT(FAT32) and NTFS partitions
Probably because FAT, VFAT, and NTFS are popular.

duuuuh! i was referering to the fact that the opensource communities should stick together as well as being compliant to proprietary systems, i think anyone can see that

>*BSD are opensource too and they deserve to be treated with respect!
I'm sure that if Linux distro developers went out and found every obscure (but open source) filesystem, they would end up with a lot of unnecessary kernel bloat.

OBSCURE!? you DO INDEED talk out of your hat mate, and a certain other orrifice too!

As for distros that come with FFS support "out of the box", sorry, I am not aware of any.

see you never needed to post here at all!
stop trolling in the threads i created to make them look bad and stop following me round like a lost sheep
if you want to give answers to my problems thats fine, but this is plain harrassment, no wonder people are leaving, you are a detrement to daniweb!

[jbennet]

I dont know, many distros are dropping support for reiserfs (after the murder) and other more obscure filesystems like XFS and JFS in favout of the more mainsteream ext3

[happygeek]

see you never needed to post here at all!
stop trolling in the threads i created to make them look bad and stop following me round like a lost sheep
if you want to give answers to my problems thats fine, but this is plain harrassment, no wonder people are leaving, you are a detrement to daniweb!

Calm down.

He is perfectly entitled to contribute to the same threads as you, and the fact that he is doing so within forums that he has always been active in would suggest he is not following you around.

Threads are open to be debated, for differing opinions to be aired, that does not constitute harassment.

Keep it real! :)

[alienlinux]

yep, i agree like 99% mate, and this is the real me and my real opinions. threads are to solve issues and to expand knowledge, not to distribute what is obviously a bias toward the person and not toward the thread subject itself!
calm is what calm receives, and they don't get any calmer and still stay sensible. did i say anything about jbennets post? no, thats coz jbennet as i have read his posts time and time again speaks nothing but sense. please start moderating on a larger scale and then you won't have to deal with this sort of thing, if i were you (and i know i'm not before you get uppity), i would reduce threads like this one to its very first post ;)

[John A]

see you never needed to post here at all!
stop trolling in the threads i created to make them look bad and stop following me round like a lost sheep
if you want to give answers to my problems thats fine, but this is plain harrassment, no wonder people are leaving, you are a detrement to daniweb!

If my statements were incorrect, fine, feel free to correct me. We all make mistakes sometimes, and I don't have a problem with someone pointing out where my mistake lies. Claiming that I'm naive and a troll is not proving anything, however. If you think that FFS has a significant popularity when compared to other filesystems, say so. Providing links to statistics would be even better.

For the record, I reply to just about anything that I have something to say. I did not have any malicious attempt whatsoever when I wrote that post, and stating that people are leaving because of me is just plain ignorance. mepnoob is the first person in all my forum history who has left because of a thread that I happened to be posting in. Oh, and he freaked out at Davey and TheNNS, not me.

[alienlinux]

well ok joe, thats fair comment, lets have some statistics and facts.

OpenBSD is reputadly the most secure operating system in the world boasting only 2 remote holes in its default install in over 10 years. FACT

It is opensource and therefore deserves the respect of the opensource community. I'd say so!

Adding the FFS support to the Linux kernel makes no measurable impact on performance and virtually if any impact on the size/footprint of the kernel.

if that last statement is fact, then whats the harm in supporting it? after all, they support Linux ext2. does M$ support Linux etc? i think not, you have to BUY captain nemo if you want to write to a non dos partition.

why do you have to belittle everything people say? I'm not trying to be mean joe, i'm trying to make a decent contribution in order to become well liked, shouldn't everyone do that? then we get statements like "Probably because FFS isn't very popular." - now a newb will look at that and assume openbsd is no good and never bother with it. I've noticed that most all of your posts are sensible and true, but be carefull. when allways being true to yourself and others, it makes it easy for people to see when your posting based on a personal bias which is what this nonsense seems to do.
there's no harm to having FFS and you know it!
thats it, there's nothing more to add, what can be the harm? i mean come on man. and just for the noobs. OPENBSD IS ALL THAT!!!
;)
having an OpenBSD gateway and a Linux desktop are a match made in heaven. i've used dos since 5.0, and linux and openbsd for 10 years now. finally dropped windows completely last christmas because i REALLY don't need it anymore. i have all mine running in wine or ports.
and as for me proving that it hasn't the popularity when compared to others
1) YOU made the claim, YOU back it up mate, I ain't your gopher!
2) Don't base everything on popularity, if it has 10,000 users versus 10,000,000 users on something else, it doesn't make it a valid reason for non-support when the support is there and so simple to integrate and causes no harm!
3) you (and i am counting) have made wild undocumented naiive statements like this 3 times as i remember so far and i see you have a predilection for it

sorry mate but i just say it as i see it
no heat no mallice, just plain common sence

[John A]

>whats the harm in supporting it?
I'm no distro expert here, but my guess is that they all add up. There's loads of filesystems that distro developers *could* support, but choose not to.

>why do you have to belittle everything people say?
I don't. Simply put, when picking apart people's posts is more convenient for me to do it, then that is what I will use to reply to them.

>i'm trying to make a decent contribution in order to become well liked
I haven't seen very many people that become well-liked when they claim their opponent is a troll. Regardless, my goal is not to make you look bad, but to challenge your arguments. If my counter arguments are incorrect, feel free to correct me. Otherwise, don't complain.

>we get statements like "Probably because FFS isn't very popular." - now
>a newb will look at that and assume openbsd is no good
You aren't making any sense. Is popularity the determining factor for whether something is "good" or not?

>YOU made the claim, YOU back it up mate, I ain't your gopher!
I never said that you had to provide proof, I simply said at the bare minimum, you should at least let me know if a statement is incorrect, and without flaming.

I am well aware that the burden of truth lies on me for this one. Very well, I have attempted to find some statistics as to the popularity of the FFS filesystem. Since I couldn't find enough statistics via Google, I decided to use Google itself as a statistic and create a chart based on the number of search results from each filesystem. This is not a completely accurate chart; I am aware of that. But I think it can still give a pretty good picture of FFS compared to other filesystems. To remove any ambiguities between the filesystem and other meanings of the acronym, I decided to append "filesystem" to each search term.

As you can see from the char below, the only filesystem which has a lower number of results than FFS is ext4. Given the fact that ext4 has only been a kernel option since 2.6.19, I'd have to say that FFS's popularity is fairly low.

>Don't base everything on popularity, if it has 10,000 users versus
>10,000,000 users on something else, it doesn't make it a valid reason
>for non-support
Yes it does; while we're talking about the subject of fairness, would it be fair to offer default FFS support, while leaving out ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, and a whole lot of others?

See, I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of my posts. My purpose isn't to make OpenBSD look bad. I have heard many positive things about it, and I'm probably going to try it at some point. The whole purpose of my first post in this thread was to suggest a reason as to why FFS isn't supported on most modern distributions.

[jbennet]

i also think FFS is incompatible with GRUB/LILO .

I know that it has massive issues booting XFS (most people make a 100mb or so ext2 /boot partition)

[alienlinux]

>>whats the harm in supporting it?
>I'm no distro expert here, but my guess is that they all add up. There's loads of filesystems that distro developers *could* support, but choose not to.

Naaa, no harm at all mate, they could, period :) show me one downside, re: size on disk/kernel footprint/memory&cpu resources usages that would negate the possibility of not doing it by todays standards and you'll find none ;) all i'm saying to them is "just switch the ****er on, will ya!?"

>>why do you have to belittle everything people say?
>I don't. Simply put, when picking apart people's posts is more convenient for me to do it, then that is what I will use to reply to them.

yeah i needed that, but i'm just sick of nobody paying attention in class, my mistake
I'll get used to it :)

>>i'm trying to make a decent contribution in order to become well liked
>I haven't seen very many people that become well-liked when they claim their opponent is a troll. Regardless, my goal is not to make you look bad, but to challenge your arguments. If my counter arguments are incorrect, feel free to correct me. Otherwise, don't complain.

neither have i but havn't seen anyone made to look good with posts that don't make sense either like THEY did with mepnoob, he's a 50 year old guy and believe he knows!
I hope he comes back

>we get statements like "Probably because FFS isn't very popular." - now
>a newb will look at that and assume openbsd is no good

You aren't making any sense. Is popularity the determining factor for whether something is "good" or not?

i think its a large factor, yes. plus i like to make sense so again yes, it IS sense, trust me, i never blow unless i know its what i said, which is why i love alex jones :) www.infowars.com

no, i personally think interoperability is key, which is why an open system is the only way to knit the world together. openbsd and linux work in harmony perfectly as far as i see and we shouldn't ignore theo's fantastic frontend network wise. i think it should be supported and more people use it on their gateways especially!
It's an important part of integrated integrity and therefore a physical demand for support!

>YOU made the claim, YOU back it up mate, I ain't your gopher!
I never said that you had to provide proof, I simply said at the bare minimum, you should at least let me know if a statement is incorrect, and without flaming.

why? i've seen nothing to disproove it, RTFM mate
and i'm saying you proove that its not with your replies instead of asking for information readily available on google.

I am well aware that the burden of truth lies on me for this one. Very well, I have attempted to find some statistics as to the popularity of the FFS filesystem. Since I couldn't find enough statistics via Google, I decided to use Google itself as a statistic and create a chart based on the number of search results from each filesystem. This is not a completely accurate chart; I am aware of that. But I think it can still give a pretty good picture of FFS compared to other filesystems. To remove any ambiguities between the filesystem and other meanings of the acronym, I decided to append "filesystem" to each search term.
its not a statistical issue , its a statistical fact that openbsd would be best served as far as , i for one am concerned (others may well run openbsd on their desktops), as a gateway/server system. if gateways are actively using it as mine, because i leave no system directly accessible and therefore essential IMHO. I remend everyone use openbsd on the front end of their systems/networks. behind it i feel better knowing there is an statically monitorable gate that simply does its job! Security is fundamental and OpenBSD CERTAINLY has a greater role in it, www.openbsd.org
whereas linux and windows are mainly in everyones sense development projects in the making. opening up a world of issues ;)
It IS this important and I feel good about my whole point on this!

As you can see from the char below, the only filesystem which has a lower number of results than FFS is ext4. Given the fact that ext4 has only been a kernel option since 2.6.19, I'd have to say that FFS's popularity is fairly low.
if a building were run in that an openbsd gateway were running the network but stifled the interoperability of that system, then it surely would become like that. that doesn't make it right, that makes it worse, thats like saying linux is doing that to make sure they don't progress, when anyone with a god damn ounce of security sense knows they can't be beat and in the real world application of secure gateways it IS essential, and therefore must be supported lest they say they won't support it, hence me asking if there were any distro's that do

>Don't base everything on popularity, if it has 10,000 users versus
>10,000,000 users on something else, it doesn't make it a valid reason
>for non-support
Yes it does; while we're talking about the subject of fairness, would it be fair to offer default FFS support, while leaving out ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, and a whole lot of others?

no it doesn't, jfs etc are all linux but bsd is a different breed built from a better point of security in mind with it's code security audited and such makes it ideal ITRW

See, I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of my posts. My purpose isn't to make OpenBSD look bad. I have heard many positive things about it, and I'm probably going to try it at some point. <you should> The whole purpose of my first post in this thread was to suggest a reason as to why FFS isn't supported on most modern distributions.

you're not aware of it's importance yet thats all, no problem man, and thanks for telling me off back there about how your coming across, it's good to know :)

the fact it IS being used by people who need it in a real world sense and i as an admin for one such breed and having installed one at a department within the university here and i know the real headcase security know it alls all use it and they may as well just switch it on, i can understand only one LINUX fs (xfs, reiserfs, jfs, ext3,) but NO *BSD support when we use both anyway! you might feel happy in your network with linux on the frontend, heck maybe you even run windows gateway and linux internally coz you heard it was more secure on the gateway, you have to realise JUST how important that is in a real world environment and not just inside your bedroom system!

i'm no good at this replying with quote crap, i personally think you ought to come talk to me at my Lab Chat and i'll even give you a shell on the gateway if you want to have a look around. one of the devs for LINUX's unrealircd (cheers wolfy :D ) has recently been making alterations to their Config to make sure it has OpenBSD 4.1 support, even though the site hasn't been updated by the looks of it to show Openbsd's versions working, which they all do up to 4.1 which is now fixed for me (/thanks wolfy :D )

The Linux Community as a whole sees the importance IMO and should be respected IMO
the post stands
does anyone know a distro that comes with default FFS support?

[jbennet]

why not just compile your own kernel

[John A]

You've obviously made up your mind as to why there are so few distros that offer FFS support, so why did you ask the question in the first place? I think I've made my point, and if you don't accept it as a possibility, fine. I was never trying to prove anything, just merely offer a reason which may or may not be correct.

[alienlinux]

not made my mind up at all, seeing as i can't read minds. i merely make argument why it should be ;) i asked because i want one. you made no valid point ;) and i never said you were wrong, again, it's just valid argument as to why it should be supported. as to why your posting here, i have no idea, you make these points out your hat man, you need to sit back and relax a bit. have more fact before replying.i'm not even interested in why it is or isn't supported. the point is it should be.

so back to the question, AGAIN

does anyone ELSE know a distro with FFS support out-the-box?
ty

[jbennet]

all distros, just compile your own kernel. its not that hard.

[alienlinux]

as allready stated, sick of doing it, i test out a lot of linux and can't be arsed to keep adding it, it's doing my nut in, see your acting like you know that this is a small thing and no big deal, but your wrong, it is a big deal and the only ones not seeing it is linux afaik

NO DISCRIMINATION!
its a fact there is no reason it can't be added, not only in the interests of interoperability which is indeed the main reason but also for the moral implications.

[alienlinux]

i also think FFS is incompatible with GRUB/LILO

I know that it has massive issues booting XFS (most people make a 100mb or so ext2 /boot partition)

really? i wasn't aware of such a limitation, well anyway! this isn't about booting an OS, this is about being able to mount and access the partition

[alienlinux]

GRUB is the GRand Unified Bootloader. Briefly, bootloader is the
first software program that runs when a computer starts. It is
responsible for loading and transferring control to the operating
system kernel software (such as NetBSD or Linux). GRUB understands
ffs, FAT{16,32}, ext2fs, ReiserFS, minixfs, and VSTafs. It can
directly boot NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux without any other
bootloader

i got that from here - http://pkgsrc.se/sysutils/grub

[wmhrae]

Hi there Guy's !

I am a Professional developer, I have step upon this very problem just 1 week ago ... Will set-up a netBsd, freeBSD and Iovu MOS (Multi Operating System) adding all file-systems including REISER4 ... and then dive deep into the netBSD-5.1 (This is MAC OSX base system) file-systems and duck out the needed FFS code and create a Linux FFS patch !!! I was astonished that its not already supported WE the Open Source Guy's should always stay on-top otherwise why do we exist !

Prof. Horstmann
SNIP