ReiserFS Proposed To Be Removed From Linux In 2022 (phoronix.com) 217
UnknowingFool writes: Linux kernel developers have discussed on the kernel developers forum to remove ReiserFS from the kernel starting in 2022. ReiserFS was added as Linux's first journaling file system 21 years ago with SUSE using it as the default filesystem until 2006. However, since Hans Reiser was sent to jail 15 years ago for murder, there has not been much development or interest in it. Noting that there have been no user-spotted fixes since 2019, longtime kernel developer Matthew Wilcox also cited that ReiserFS was only block for some kernel changes he wished to implement. These days there are better alternatives like EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and OpenZFS.
The comparison will no longer go (Score:5, Funny)
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Why not? It will not lose its status as a "file system".
I remember ReiserFS speeding up a system that had millions of tiny files considerably back then, it was very good at the time. I guess if there was no murdering or no catching the murderer, it might still be relevant in some current version.
I am not sure how to feel about it, I mean, on the one hand, if I only used software made by ethical people, would I have any software to use? On the other hand, there are "tiers" of unethical/criminal activity, so
Re: The comparison will no longer go (Score:2)
The fact the file system is named after him is sort of a red flag. Makes it hard to put on your resume.
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Nothing stopping anyone from forking the code and rebranding it.
But what compelling reason would there be to choose NinaFS in 2022 over filesystems that have been battled-tested through support and development over the past decade and a half within Linus' official tree?
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Re:The comparison will no longer go (Score:5, Informative)
Have a closer look at the last column on that table.
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Well, yes, that's what we are talking about. GP said the file system comparison will no longer be relevant. I am asking why not, it is still going to be in a list of "file system" after it's removed from the kernel, and I haven't heard anything about his wife being unmurdered, so the table will still be relevant...
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Perfect. I looked at that table 3 times today didn't notice that. Beautiful.
Re:The comparison will no longer go (Score:5, Informative)
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There's no need for it to be in the kernel anyway, it's not like I'm about to boot from it.
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I used ReiserFS for the /tmp filesystem for precisely that reason. Most files there are lock files or small workspace files, so having something that accelerates that case is actually very useful. However, as /tmp is wiped on reboot, it would be better to have a filesystem that handles that case which doesn't journal, as that's data you will never be replaying. I can therefore see a more stable, trimmed-down ReiserFS as having value. But that would be a new FS, so would have a different name.
There may be be
"User spotted fixes"? (Score:2)
Surely the question is whether there are any known bugs that have been left unpatched. What is a "user-spotted fix" anyway?
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Fixes come from three sources: users, people who care about that particular code (developers and maintainers), and people who are mostly interested in other things but encounter that code in the course of what they care more about.
For reiserfs, the second group is currently empty. So if users are not finding bugs, either the code is super mature, or the maintenance burden falls on the third group of people (who could be spending the time instead on other things). Linux does not try to maintain internal AP
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So, it's really "user-supplied fixes", then?
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If you take "user-spotted bugs" literally, that is even worse: There is not enough "organic" use of the filesystem to find bugs, so it takes time from syzkaller and similar teams to even exercise the code, and then somebody else has to take the time to analyze and fix the failure.
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Linux does not try to maintain internal API stability,
I've often wondered why that is. Can someone tell me why?
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I've often wondered why that is. Can someone tell me why?
Presumably it's the usual reason -- they decided that the overhead of maintaining backwards compatibility (in terms of additional testing that would need to be done, additional size and complexity added to the codebase, and the limitations it would place on design improvements that could be made) was too large to be worthwhile, and they'd rather suffer the pain of having to update the calling code than have to support "the old ways" indefinitely.
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There are a lot of known bugs, although quite a lot of them are untriaged.
Mad about ReiserFS (Score:4, Funny)
Paul is appalled.
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I must've missed the episode where he killed Jamie.
Turn over a new leaf. (Score:5, Funny)
15 years? (Score:3)
He had all that time to develope it to perfection as his rehabilitation. He could have been a useful to society. What a waste!
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I used this in production (Score:2)
A better link for the messages (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A better link for the messages (Score:5, Funny)
Which alternative supports "tail" packing? (Score:3)
Which of the proposed alternatives is as efficient as reiserfs when storing millions of little files?
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NTFS can store files smaller than a block in the directory entry itself. Efficient storage for small files isn't exactly a high-tech feature these days.
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/tmp is still mostly lock files, so basically files of length 0-8 bytes (depending on whether a PID was with them).
What do people use for Maildir now? (Score:2)
So.. I'm one of those people who does use reiserfs. If you send me an email, it's stored in that. That's all I use it for, but that's something.
What other filesystems perform as well (or at least within an order of magnitude, no more than ten times slower) for a situation where you have tens of thousands of little files all in the same directory?
Or do people simply not do Maildir anymore (the idea being that if you have tens of thousands of files in a directory, then "you're holding your phone wrong")?
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5.15
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For just one mailbox? It might feel good to know that you're getting the most performance possible, but will you really be able to tell the difference just moving it to Btrfs or EXT4? Unless it's an 8086 with a dying hard drive, it's probably going to be nearly imperceptible.
Kind of a pity (Score:2)
Don't really know enough about the relative merits of ReiserFS over others, but just because the guy murdered his wife shouldn't impact the quality, or lack thereof, of his code. They could just fork and rename it to something else if they're worried about the name association.
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The prime (almost sole) developer and architect of the filesystem is not in a position to maintain it, and that's unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
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I think you missed the "lack of interest" and "there are better alternatives" bits.
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ReiserFS... (Score:2)
ReiserFS is a killer file system. :)
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Damn good filesystem too.
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Funny)
Especially considering it's unique feature [wikipedia.org] (last right column).
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Especially considering it's unique feature [wikipedia.org] (last right column).
The fact that that column still exists in Wikipedia made my day. Thank you AC.
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Yeah, thanks. Had to explain my laughter to my wife on that one. That went well...
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Still exists in Wikipedia's history. Not on the current page unless somebody snuck it back in.
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The only good thing about it was that it let you create/destroy very small files very quickly. This made it a superb choice for /tmp. The frequent corruption on the FS between boots was ok there because that directory gets wiped at reboot anyway. However, it did mean the journalling was the single-most useless feature, because that actually reduced how much speed you could get.
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It doesn't really delete it, and an optional worker thread will piece it back together.
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:4, Funny)
Or flush it down a toilet.
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Re:Hans Reiser (Score:4, Interesting)
It is silly to let his talents go to waste. Why can't they let him code from his cell?
Considering all the time on his hands, he would likely be even more productive in prison.
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Funny)
Writing a killer application?
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says they don't? Ultimately, the problem is that he's batshit crazy. His latest legal act was a 300+ page lawsuit against 70+ people, including his own attorney and the judges who ruled against him. It was dismissed for being nonsense. He may once have been a capable developer, but today, he's a ruined halfwit. He murdered his wife and buried her a half mile from the house where he lived with his mother. He's not firing on all cylinders.
But he's up for parole in about a year, so maybe he'll get out and fix up ReiserFS. I, for one, will do my best to avoid him.
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Who says they don't? Ultimately, the problem is that he's batshit crazy.
This.
We're also talking about a filesystem which has not been actively maintained for ~4 years now - when better alternatives are now available.
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This.
We're also talking about a filesystem which has not been actively maintained for ~4 years now - when better alternatives are now available.
And a whole shedload of disks that will become unreadable if they remove it from Linux.
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Informative)
The proposal is to remove it from the kernel. I'm pretty sure you'll still be able to mount your ReiserFS drives via FUSE.
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I think you will need to provide some type of study to support your assumption. From a personal perspective, I know zero (0) people using that file system on either a production or test environment. There very well could be an old system still using it, but I would surmise that those systems will never receive an updated kernel so the data is safe.
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Even a few years ago, the only ResiserFS systems I came across were running older Linux distros. This will not affect them.
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In all the time working with embedded systems, I've not seen RFS anywhere except a few older Linux distros on some cast-off servers. RFS has a very narrow use case these days (a filesystem for an embedded device with a low CPU/RAM, where the device has to handle large amounts of small files...) Other than that, there are filesystems which are much better and are updated. For general use, btrfs or ZFS. For basic embedded use, F2FS or ext4. For RHEL, XFS.
ReiserFS also has issues with fsck and B+ tree reb
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit of a silly argument. If he had been let maintain the code, who knows what might have happened?
And if dogs could fly, who knows what might happen?
It really doesn't make a difference why. The point is that ReiserFS is becoming a burden in Linux's codebase, especially given how it has gained support for (arguably) much better alternatives ever since.
Re: Hans Reiser (Score:2)
How is ZFS only narrowly better? It does a LOT more than ReiserFS. Its one solitary downside is that it is more compute heavy, which is only natural considering its capabilities.
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Maybe you want to handle tens of millions of small files on an embedded device?
But even then you'd reach for modern out-of-tree RFS, not RFS3 in mainline.
Re: Hans Reiser (Score:3)
If you're making comparisons to ZFS, the scope should fall almost exclusively within the domain of enterprise class storage, likely not desktop and certainly not embedded. Embedded is highly unlikely to use features like raid, snapshots, and dedup.
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I've used btrfs for this exact purpose, a Maildir directory on a Raspberry Pi, which is pretty tough on any filesystem that is inode based. btrfs handles it without issue. RFS was a great filesystem for its time, but all the work that Facebook has put into btrfs has made it a top candidate for a filesystem where ZFS isn't really needed, and btrfs works well on modern embedded hardware, although it is definitely not a one size fits all solution.
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Even though ZFS is popular, I'd definitely not count out btrfs. It has limped along for a while, but Facebook has put a lot of work into it, and has proven its worth as an enterprise tier filesystem, both for servers, as well as NAS units (Synology uses btrfs by default on all their midrange and up NAS models, and if there were issues with the filesystem, it would be obvious by the screaming.)
Maybe on a very limited embedded CPU like a Raspberry Pi Zero, would RFS have a lot more merit, but not many Raspbe
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"Ultimately, the problem is that he's batshit crazy"
Yup, and probably always has been. Madness and intelligence are not mutually exclusive and when focusing on a very narrow domain - eg coding - someone mad may behave just like a sane person in the same situation. But take them out of that narrow domain and things start to go wrong.
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I never met Hans, but I know people who know him and your description is exactly how they describe him.
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Interesting)
When I worked on filesystems in the HP-UX kernel, Hans Reiser spent a day with us talking about the possibility of adding ReiserFS to HP-UX. His terms were too demanding for us, but beyond that, he didn't come off as anything more than another techie weirdo, like we all were. Granted, the potential amount of money he could have made kept him on his best behavior, but after the murder story broke, our reaction was "Well, I'm glad we avoided all that," and not, "Yeah, I could see him doing that."
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HP-UX was a very nice version of Unix. Shame its been discontinued.
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HP-UX still runs on HP's Itanium-based Superdome servers. AFAIK it was never ported to x86, so it will probably die out when Itanium does. (Yes, I know you could argue that this happened decades ago, but they still sell the stuff.)
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I happen to remember a lot of Drama around ReiserFS even before the Murder.
Madness and intelligence are actually exclusive. However, someone who is off, will often be very single minded, which could be good in term of getting the work done, or fixated on his vision and make sure there are no compromises to said vision. Which often creates a good product... However they tend not to stay around for too long, because said product is so fixed on the need of the time, it no longer expands to match the changes
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:4, Insightful)
"Madness and intelligence are actually exclusive"
Google John Nash then get back to us.
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Terry Davis comes to mind, creator of TempleOS. No doubt that he was absolutely off-the-wall crazy. Claimed he heard God speaking to him. Paranoid delusions. Manic episodes. Utterly dysfunctional. And wrote a multitasking x86 operating system from the ground up, including writing his own kernel in assembly and inventing his own programming language with compiler for the applications. That takes genius-level programming skill.
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So I kind of doubt that Reiser would be welcome back into the Linux kernel what with his personality and also the slight issue of murdering his wife. Even under an assumed name or another project he's doubtless goin
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Maybe he can run for office, he sounds qualified.
Re:Hans Reiser (Score:5, Informative)
He's the original incel. He bought a mail order bride from Russia (not even joking look it up) and had two children. She wanted to divorce his sorry ass and he killed her. He was under investigation for money laundering at the time too. That sorry piece of shit ruined the life of not only his wife and her family but their children too. Go read the comments here supporting him at the time. She disappears and then he buys two books about true crime and can't seem to recall why the passenger seat of his car disappeared along with his wife.
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Laws aren't [supposed to be] about revenge, they're about cost to society. It was cheaper to let him plea bargain. He still got convicted of murder, and that conviction will still follow him around.
If he's still a hazard then hopefully they don't grant his parole.
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Simple : better things replaced it and there's no more interest in a fs that hasn't been worked on in a decade. Cancel the truth by saying it's cancel culture. :) Go go go .. please go ahead .. meanwhile we'll work on removing this old fs and making new things that are better than that relic of the past.
Re: Hans Reiser (Score:3)
The guy
went to jail for murder.
(Emphasis mine.)
Exactly. The guy. Not the code.
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Were you complaining about cancel culture when that was removed?
Apart from the fact that "cancel culture" hadn't entered my vocabulary then yet... yes, I kind of did. I always wondered why ReiserFS wasn't "en vogue" anymore. I mean... it was one hell of a FS, with many advantages, working properly. Years ahead of alternatives.
I also didn't have the impression that it was *exclusively* Reiser who wrote that... surely somebody would know enough about it to step in his (technological) shoes?
The rest of the argument is moot: of course now it's 15 years behind the curve, and
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No it was his baby and he provided funding for the devs that worked on it, all of that of course disappeared when he went to jail so the code became stale and basically unmaintained for 15 years. This is not cancel culture, this is just the normal "lets evict dead code from the kernel".
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But why is it part of the core kernel code? Why isn't it provided as a separate loadable module?
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Apart from the fact that "cancel culture" hadn't entered my vocabulary then yet... yes, I kind of did. I always wondered why ReiserFS wasn't "en vogue" anymore. I mean... it was one hell of a FS, with many advantages, working properly. Years ahead of alternatives.
No one in Linux kernel development really cares what is and is not "en vogue". That is your projection that Linux kernel developers give a damn about popular culture. Again, it is obsolete compared to other filesystems so it is being removed from future releases.
I also didn't have the impression that it was *exclusively* Reiser who wrote that... surely somebody would know enough about it to step in his (technological) shoes?
The corporation owned by Reiser that was responsible for ReiserFS and Reiser4, Namesys [wikipedia.org] has been out of business since 2008. Edward Shishkin, a former Namesys employee, has worked in creating Reiser4 and now 5 but ReiserFS (v3 and older) development
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What contributors?
The argument over removing ReiserFS has nothing to do with his jail sentence, it has to do with the fact that there ARE NO CONTRIBUTORS.
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but forsaking good ideas because of their provenance is about the stupidest thing that we could do
The person is not and should not be the problem. I agree if the worst scum bag on earth voices a good idea, we should embrace it if it has real merit.
However ideas/technology that are the direct result of unethical practice should be either dismissed or mothballed for a period of time (probably a generation or two). For example you might learn and develop a lot of good ideas about wound care, by abducting and maiming are large number of people in a certain ethnic minority and experimenting on them. No so
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Von Braun would like to disagree...
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Re:Hans Reiser (Score:4, Informative)
Mengele wasn't a scientist. He was a butcher who happened to have a degree. His methods were not remotely scientific and anything he collected was never used by any serious researcher.
However, there were Nazi scientists who collected data in a scientific fashion that was used, at least for a time and perhaps even now, by some serious researchers. Among the most carefully documented were survival experiments that, while brutally unethical even under standards of the time, nevertheless provided valuable data about human physiological responses to extreme conditions. There were also drug trials that were carefully managed and recorded that were useful for a time. Some other research was also carefully collected, although much of it was tainted by the goal of demonstrating "Aryan superiority."
I first ran across this debate in the 1980s, when the information was a lot more fresh than it is now. Most of what they collected has been supplanted by more accurate work collected under ethical (or at least more ethical) circumstances, but it's still going on. A 2021 paper [wiley.com] summarized the debate, and while much of what it discusses happened decades ago, it notes that there are still questions about how to address ongoing use of data and biological artifacts. This would only happen if the data and artifacts continued to hold scientific value while ignoring the origins.
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Re:Hans Reiser (Score:4, Insightful)
You can always tell a boomer by how they throw around the word woke. It's only kept in the lexicon by Fox to stir up the rubes. Same with critical race theory. Republicans are tripping over themselves to ban something that isn't even taught in public schools and barely taught at the college level. Snowflakes indeed. Pointing out that historically people with brown skin tended to have a very different experience than white people sure touches a nerve.
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Not "boomers," just tribalism (Score:3)