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

Matthias G. Eckermann mge at suse.com
Wed Mar 13 16:49:57 MDT 2013


Hello Maximilan and all,

On 2013-03-13 T 17:56 +0100 Decker Maximilian wrote:
 
> 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.

This is understood.
 
> 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

Ah, good to have some data points.

> 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.

I will ask in our development team.

so long -
	MgE
 
> Really looking forward to your mentioned blog post.

> -----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
> SUSE LINUX Products GmbH  Maxfeldstraße 5          90409 Nürnberg Germany
> GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) _______________________________________________
> sles-beta mailing list
> sles-beta at lists.suse.com
> http://lists.suse.com/mailman/listinfo/sles-beta

-- 
Matthias G. Eckermann     Senior Product Manager   SUSE® Linux Enterprise
Phone: +49 30 44315731    Mobile: +49 179 2949448    E-Mail: mge at suse.com
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH  Maxfeldstraße 5          90409 Nürnberg Germany
GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)


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