[sles-beta] few things to note after my first install

Wed Mar 13 10:56:29 MDT 2013

Hi MgE,

thanks a bunch for your feedback, I almost gave up hope...

So it seems like there is a chance for getting fully supported r/w ext4 in SLES 12, well that would be great.
And I know it might not be the best filesystem to choose for every scenario, but (IMHO) at least for the local 
filesystems it is quite superior to ext3 (and yes, many different reasons and opinions here ... we can skip that ;-)
At least, if we are able to select ext4, many discussions will be avoided, whether or not we actually use ext4 then.

Anyway, regarding my reiserfs3 comments - I was referring to this long-standing-but-still-stuck bug report:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29162

As I said, I do not have SLES 11 SP2 systems running on reiserfs3, so I cannot tell if SLES is affected here.
But I guess it is. There even is a @suse mail address involved (CC on bugzilla), so if there were any SuSE specific
fixes to that I think they would have been committed upstream already.

Really looking forward to your mentioned blog post.

thanks

- Maximilian

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com [mailto:sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com] Im Auftrag von Matthias G. Eckermann
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 13. März 2013 16:57
An: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Authorized Beta Program
Betreff: Re: [sles-beta] few things to note after my first install

Hello Maximilian and all,

sorry for not responding more quickly: I was traveling.

So, we have two questions here (at least):
1. ext4: why not fully supported yet? SLES 12?
2. reiserfs quality

On 2013-03-04 T 15:39 +0100 Decker Maximilian wrote:

> please, any official comment on why there is no ext4 support in SLES 
> 11, even in SP3 ? This question is asked quite a lot by our customers, 
> and I am running out of arguments here. Especially when it comes to 
> "but in RHEL there is .... " To some degree I could understand that 
> for 11, it was missing from the beginning. But what are the odds that 
> we see ext4 in 12?

1. There are several reasons, why we do not support ext4 in
   read-write-mode yet (we do support it in read-only-mode), 
   as you may know from studying the release notes.

   For more details I probably will provide a longer E-Mail
   or even a public blog in the comming days. To give you an
   idea already, about why we are not supporting it yet:

   * Missing Scalability, specifically compared to XFS.
     As you know, we do support XFS in SLES for 8+ years
     already without extra costs.

   * Questions about ext4's reliability specifically on
     multi-disk backends (there should be some public
     information about this). As far as I know that's the
     reason, why another Linux distributor is using
     XFS underneath their storage product and not ext4,
     even if ext4 is their default filesystem. That should
     tell us something, ...

   * Supporting a filesystem needs more than just support
     for the Kernel module, but integration, QA, 
     certifications, ... 

   For SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 we plan to follow the 
   upstream development in the Kernel area, and as you may
   know, ext3 and ext4 are now served by one Kernel module.

> Btw - you know that reiserfs (v3) has some serious stability issues as 
> of post-2.6.35 kernels, right ? The BKL replacements somehow rendered 
> reiserfs prone to deadlocking in a more or less frequent manner. These 
> issues seem to exist up to at least the current 3.8 kernels. So (in 
> theory) also SLE >= SP2 (i.e. 3.0.x) kernels might be affected.  But 
> the good thing is - I cannot tell for sure as none of our maintained 
> SLES 11 installations is on reiserfs. (same with btrfs)

2. Where does your information about ReiserFS come from? 

   Are you sure that this information is valid for 
   SUSE Linux Enterprise Kernels?

   We certainly do have additional patches in ReiserFS
   in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Kernel, which might
   not yet have been accepted / shiped upstream.

   I checked back with our Kernel team, and we do not
   have any reports or issues open with ReiserFS currently.

   Do you see ReiserFS issues with SUSE Linux Enterprise
   in your environment? -- In that case, please open an SR.

so long -
	MgE

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com 
> [mailto:sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com] Im Auftrag von Swartz, 
> Patrick H
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 24. Februar 2013 19:57
> An: 'SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Authorized Beta Program'
> Betreff: Re: [sles-beta] few things to note after my first install

> To add to that, we can't/won't be able to use BTRFS until it can 
> support /boot.  Our SLES11 deployment model is based on using Atomic 
> updates, which requires the first 2 partitions to be dedicated to 
> Atomic.  So, that means that /boot is therefore incorporated into the 
> root partition.  The ability to roll back patches and upgrades is 
> critical, but not being able to roll back a kernel makes BTRFS useless 
> for us.  Just my 2cents worth from the field...

> Patrick Swartz
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com 
> [mailto:sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com] On Behalf Of Decker 
> Maximilian
> Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 11:25 AM
> To: 'SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Authorized Beta Program'
> Subject: Re: [sles-beta] few things to note after my first install

> Hi list,
> 
> regarding the lack of (supported) ext4, just out of curiosity - what 
> exactly is SuSE's reason behind obviously abandoning ext4, which by 
> now is a well known, fast and proven evolution to ext3 ?
> 
> Of course, BTRFS really is the cool new stuff, and it seems like it 
> will become an amazing alternative. But to be honest none of our SLES 
> customers is actually running BTRFS in their datacenters yet.  Some 
> lab or testing installations do exist, though, however bottom line is 
> - for production systems we are effectively stuck with ext3.  
> (sometimes even due to missing support from 3rd party SW vendors)
> 
> If I understand correctly ext4 might also be missing in SLES 12.  And 
> I know there are plenty of discussions on this matter all around the 
> internet, but hey, I hope with the current Beta maybe SuSE can shed 
> some official light on that. Really would be great to know.
> 
> Please don't get me wrong, I know there are quite a bunch of brilliant 
> developers at SuSE that are giving their blessings to the current 
> state of BTRFS, and we also got official SuSE support on that, but it 
> just does not help "in the field".... people still consider it beta.
> 
> 
> thanks,
> 
> - Maximilian

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com [mailto:sles-beta- 
> > bounces at lists.suse.com] On Behalf Of Thorsten Kukuk
> > Sent: Thursday, 21 February 2013 8:36 PM
> > To: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Authorized Beta Program
> > Subject: Re: [sles-beta] few things to note after my first install
> > 
> > On Thu, Feb 21, Greg.Lehmann at csiro.au wrote:
> > 
> <---& ----->
> > 
> > > 2.       I can't believe we have btrfs as a filesystem option but no
> > ext4  - again SLES 12 hopefully.
> > 
> > I don't think that this will change.
> 

-- 
Matthias G. Eckermann     Senior Product Manager   SUSE® Linux Enterprise
Phone: +49 30 44315731    Mobile: +49 179 2949448    E-Mail: mge at suse.com
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