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SUSE Linux moves to 3.0 kernel with SP2 (Register)
The Register looks at
the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 release, which
brings a lot of new software with it. "[T]he snapshotting features of
btrfs as well as the scalability are why SUSE Linux is recommending it as
the root file system for SLES 11 SP2. The company has encapsulated some of
these btrfs features into a tool called Snapper, which integrates with the
SLES update and Yast management tool and allows system admins to take a
system snapshot before they make important changes to the system and then
instantly roll them back if something goes snafu."
(Log in to post comments)
No EXT4 support Posted Feb 28, 2012 23:40 UTC (Tue) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link]
It's there if you want and need it, it's just supported the same way btrfs is.
RO, RW is unsupported !! Posted Feb 28, 2012 23:57 UTC (Tue) by xose (guest, #535) [Link]
http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes/s390x/SUSE-SLES/...
---cut---
To facilitate the migration of an ext4 file system to another, supported file system, the SLE 11 SP2 kernel now contains a fully supported ext4 file system module, which provides solely read-only access to the file system.
If read-write access to an ext4 file system is still required, you may install the ext4-writeable KMP (kernel module package). This package contains a kernel module that provides read-write access to an ext4 file system. Be aware, that this kernel module is unsupported.
ext4 is not supported for the installation of the SUSE Linux Enterprise operating system files
With SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2 we support offline migration from ext4 to the supported btrfs filesystem.
RO, RW is unsupported !! Posted Feb 29, 2012 5:29 UTC (Wed) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
So wait, does this mean that SUSE is the first Linux distro (at least major one) to move to BTRFS as the default file system? And this is supposed to be an ENTERPRISE distro?
And to top that off, they decided to go out of their way to remove write support from Ext4? Is this April 1?
RO, RW is unsupported !! Posted Feb 29, 2012 5:44 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It is indeed very weird. Btrfs doesn't even have a fsck that can fix issues and has a number of bugs that needs to be fixed and time to mature to be considered enterprise ready. I just don't see the rationale behind this move.
RO, RW is unsupported !! Posted Feb 29, 2012 6:25 UTC (Wed) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
This is just like when SUSE did the exact same with Xen and then made *sure* to tout how great it was and Redhat was wrong for not shipping it.
Then Redhat pointed out the many flaws and how they had hacked the snot out of their Xen, waited about 6 months, and released an update with Xen that didn't suck nearly as bad. This is just SUSE being SUSE. Nothing bad about the way they do it, just a bit different.
there is a btrfsck Posted Feb 29, 2012 17:33 UTC (Wed) by mleu (subscriber, #73224) [Link] On a SLES 11 SP2 system:
# btrfsck
there is a btrfsck Posted Feb 29, 2012 17:49 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
That doesn't mean anything. A fsck has existed for a long time. One that can fix issues is missing.
there is a btrfsck Posted Mar 1, 2012 9:30 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Well the fix for now is "restore from backup". But a more advanced btrfsck is believed to appear shortly.
RO, RW is unsupported !! Posted Feb 29, 2012 8:47 UTC (Wed) by aj (subscriber, #39001) [Link]
Btrfs is not the default file system, it's available at installation time as an option.
RO, RW is unsupported !! Posted Feb 29, 2012 13:58 UTC (Wed) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
Ah, I see, Ext3 is apparently the default filesystem. I would have imagined most entities would have transitioned to at least Ext4... at least ones that would be pushing btrfs at all.
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 10:07 UTC (Wed) by milliams (guest, #71641) [Link]
"revved-up toolchain, including the GTNU gcc 4.3.4 compilers and glibc 2.11.1 libraries, Perl 5.10, PHP 5.2.6, Python 2.6.0, and Ruby 1.8.7."
It's a real shame that anyone thinks that this is a revved-up toolchain. Along with still only having KDE 4.3 and GNOME 2.28 it's really not that impressive. Essentially, it's just an update of the Kernel -- disappointing.
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 10:21 UTC (Wed) by juliank (subscriber, #45896) [Link]
Yep, you're basically right.(Of that list,) Only the kernel changed from SP1 to SP2, upgrading from the previous 2.6.32 longterm kernel to the 3.0 longterm kernel.
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 11:48 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
Changing the compiler to something newer could be an issue for updates I think as "the mangling of ‘va_list’ has changed in GCC 4.4".
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 16:48 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Afaik that change only applies to the ARM platform.
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 13:28 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>It's a real shame that anyone thinks that this is a revved-up toolchain. Along with still only having KDE 4.3 and GNOME 2.28 it's really not that impressive. Essentially, it's just an update of the Kernel -- disappointing.
Well, it's not like RedHat would update /their/ tools either. RH5 still has gcc-4.1 and iptables-1.3.5 for one, despite all the known problems in the latter.
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 14:01 UTC (Wed) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
Sure but Redhat does massive backporting of the upstream patches to fix many bugs. Oftentimes their "old" releases are closer in reality to the new releases depending on the software. I'm sure that SUSE does the exact same thing as they hire plenty of very smart individuals to maintain their distribution.
TL;DNR: In enterprise distributions, package versions are not directly comparable to the upstream identical software versions due to massive backporting for features / stability.
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 13:37 UTC (Wed) by aj (subscriber, #39001) [Link]
There's additionally a GCC 4.6 in the SDK ;)
Revved-up? Posted Feb 29, 2012 17:20 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] I think that's fine for an enterprise distribution. I've just run into a problem when this command line:
tar -xOf x.tar 'x*
worked fine on SuSE 10, but didn't work on SuSE 11, I had to use this:
tar --wildcards -xOf x.tar 'x*'
You might say that's a non-issue if one gets a new KDE and anyway it took about only a half an hour to track down the failure in the program to this command line, but it's still annoying and this half hour could have been spent better. I don't need new "features", I only want bug fixes in an enterprise distribution upgrade.
SUSE Linux moves to 3.0 kernel with SP2 (Register) Posted Feb 29, 2012 18:18 UTC (Wed) by sciurus (subscriber, #58832) [Link] Oracle just released a beta of their 3.0 kernel. They will be supporting btrfs as well. SUSE and Oracle both release and support new kernel versions during the life of a distribution. It would be nice if Red Hat did the same. Yes, their kernel is heavily patched, but only a few new features slip in. Soon RHEL6 is going to be on 2.6.32 while SUSE and Oracle are both on 3.0.
Btrfs by default Posted Mar 4, 2012 23:06 UTC (Sun) by rleigh (subscriber, #14622) [Link]
A few weeks ago, an intermittently faulty SATA cable caused one of my two HDDs to misbehave. I had two partitions: one LVM PV on MD RAID1, the other Btrfs RAID1. Upon replacing the cable, the MD RAID1 array re-synched with no issues. The Btrfs filesystem was completely toasted and repeatedly oopsed the kernel. Even trying to mount the per-disc partitions individually failed. While the Btrfs filesystem had worked flawlessly to this point, it was clear that it could not deal with a fairly simple problem which MD coped with perfectly, and that the filesystem was /entirely unrecoverable/ in this situation. Not ready for real-world use yet, in my experience.
Btrfs by default Posted Mar 5, 2012 9:50 UTC (Mon) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
On the other hand, the good news is that the guinea pigs to use this filesystem appear to be lining up in large numbers, and through their sweat, tears and lost files we might gain an improved alternative to ext4. Perhaps 1 year from now, ext* family of filesystem is no longer the first choice for new installs. An end of an era, certainly, if that should come to pass.
I set up a little partition with the transparent compression feature using btrfs and as copied the 1.5 GB of / on it + sync at end. That went really fast through, almost as if it had just done sequential writing, and good 300 MB of I/O was spared due to the compression kicking in. Initial results certainly seem encouraging, but obviously the filesystem is to be treated unusable at this point of time.
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