XFS...Windows?

XFS...Windows?

[Yuji Saeki]

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Congratulations on your file system, it’s quite nice. I’ve benchmarked it myself, it’s very impressive. I’m curious though, is there are thought to a Windows driver? If someone ported the most current-stable version to Windows (free) under the same license ‘GNU Lesser General Public License’ with entire credit to XFS, would SGI be okay with that? A ‘no-warranty implied’ (etc) kind of protection of course. Quite a few devs that I work with enjoy the XFS filesystem and we dev in both Linux and Windows. We’re very interested in making this happen with respect to the XFS project.


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RE: XFS...Windows?

[Shaun Gosse]

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Well…at the risk of jumping into something here:

“would SGI be okay with that”: keep in mind this a community project. There are contributors to XFS here at SGI. There is also a lot of work done by employees of Redhat as well as other companies (and a few freelance / people interested regardless of current position). Anyhow, just a quibble to note that it’s not a question of what SGI dictates. Although I will note that I’ve actually raised the idea of XFS on Windows internally (here at SGI) and while it’s not a priority I would say there’s at least some interest. At the least, if you build it, we’ll certainly take a look at it. ☺

I saw an email a while back on this list that implied someone was trying to work on that iirc; I didn’t see any follow-up from it. There are also some projects that look abandoned which tried to do this I recall from previous searches on this.

One of the suggestions I heard when I was considering this was to look at how the ext port on Windows works. That looks mildly inactive itself but should be good for comparison.

Internally, SGI has a proprietary system, CXFS, which does clustered XFS including Windows as client nodes. So we’ve got code that actually does XFS data writes from Windows nodes. Of course, the tricky bit is managing all of the metadata/logging, which isn’t touched from Windows in that system, but it’s just another tidbit to note “yes, this type of system should be possible”.

As far as licensing, I’m certainly no expert, but AFAIK it should be possible to use the same GPL license as you note and make an open-source Windows driver for this using as much of the current XFS code as is convenient. There are nuances in the license though. I can try to find the article if you’re interested: I read a post previously by someone who had developed a GPL driver on Windows and was noting concerns about linking against closed source libraries (essentially decided it was okay because it (a) could be considered a system library and (b) they were starting a fresh project so they could add extra exemptions specifically allowing that).

I am a novice at XFS and, frankly, at Windows kernel device development as well. But I’m certainly interested in seeing a GPL XFS-on-Windows developed at some point. If you go ahead with this, I’d definitely appreciate any information and would be glad to assist in any way I can. And myself personally, I’d absolutely appreciate someone else taking the lead on this, because with other issues I’m working on, I would be unlikely to put serious solo effort into this anytime soon.

Cheers,
-Shaun Gosse
CXFS Windows
SGI

From: xfs-bounces@oss.sgi.com [mailto:xfs-bounces@oss.sgi.com] On Behalf Of Yuji Saeki
Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 5:25 PM
To: xfs@oss.sgi.com
Subject: XFS...Windows?

Congratulations on your file system, it’s quite nice. I’ve benchmarked it myself, it’s very impressive. I’m curious though, is there are thought to a Windows driver? If someone ported the most current-stable version to Windows (free) under the same license ‘GNU Lesser General Public License’ with entire credit to XFS, would SGI be okay with that? A ‘no-warranty implied’ (etc) kind of protection of course. Quite a few devs that I work with enjoy the XFS filesystem and we dev in both Linux and Windows. We’re very interested in making this happen with respect to the XFS project.

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Re: XFS...Windows?

[Eric Sandeen]

On 12/8/13, 5:24 PM, Yuji Saeki wrote:
> Congratulations on your file system, it’s quite nice. I’ve
> benchmarked it myself, it’s very impressive. I’m curious though, is
> there are thought to a Windows driver? If someone ported the most
> current-stable version to Windows (free) under the same license ‘GNU
> Lesser General Public License’ with entire credit to XFS

XFS isn't under the LGPL, it's GPL, as is the rest of the kernel code,
and the license terms should be quite clear.

> would SGI
> be okay with that? A ‘no-warranty implied’ (etc) kind of protection
> of course. Quite a few devs that I work with enjoy the XFS filesystem
> and we dev in both Linux and Windows. We’re very interested in making
> this happen with respect to the XFS project.

I'm not a lawyer, but it's not really an issue of opinion - it's a legal
matter.  If you can port XFS to Windows while maintaining the terms
of the license agreements on both ends, you're free to do so.

The technical difficulty of such a task is another matter as well.  :)

-Eric

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Re: XFS...Windows?

[Jay Ashworth]

Just to be clear about what's being discussed here: 

The proposal is to create a *windows* filesystem driver to allow Windows
machines to read and write locally-attached XFS filesystems, correct?

Presumably, such filesystems would be device-portable to Linux or other
machines also running XFS?

Cheers,
-- jr 'will ask stupid questions for food' a

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Shaun Gosse" <sgosse@sgi.com>
> To: "Yuji Saeki" <yuji1@mail.com>, xfs@oss.sgi.com
> Sent: Monday, December 9, 2013 11:16:38 AM
> Subject: RE: XFS...Windows?
> Well…at the risk of jumping into something here:
> 
> “would SGI be okay with that”: keep in mind this a community project.
> There are contributors to XFS here at SGI. There is also a lot of work
> done by employees of Redhat as well as other companies (and a few
> freelance / people interested regardless of current position). Anyhow,
> just a quibble to note that it’s not a question of what SGI dictates.
> Although I will note that I’ve actually raised the idea of XFS on
> Windows internally (here at SGI) and while it’s not a priority I would
> say there’s at least some interest. At the least, if you build it,
> we’ll certainly take a look at it. ☺
> 
> I saw an email a while back on this list that implied someone was
> trying to work on that iirc; I didn’t see any follow-up from it. There
> are also some projects that look abandoned which tried to do this I
> recall from previous searches on this.
> 
> One of the suggestions I heard when I was considering this was to look
> at how the ext port on Windows works. That looks mildly inactive
> itself but should be good for comparison.
> 
> Internally, SGI has a proprietary system, CXFS, which does clustered
> XFS including Windows as client nodes. So we’ve got code that actually
> does XFS data writes from Windows nodes. Of course, the tricky bit is
> managing all of the metadata/logging, which isn’t touched from Windows
> in that system, but it’s just another tidbit to note “yes, this type
> of system should be possible”.
> 
> As far as licensing, I’m certainly no expert, but AFAIK it should be
> possible to use the same GPL license as you note and make an
> open-source Windows driver for this using as much of the current XFS
> code as is convenient. There are nuances in the license though. I can
> try to find the article if you’re interested: I read a post previously
> by someone who had developed a GPL driver on Windows and was noting
> concerns about linking against closed source libraries (essentially
> decided it was okay because it (a) could be considered a system
> library and (b) they were starting a fresh project so they could add
> extra exemptions specifically allowing that).
> 
> I am a novice at XFS and, frankly, at Windows kernel device
> development as well. But I’m certainly interested in seeing a GPL
> XFS-on-Windows developed at some point. If you go ahead with this, I’d
> definitely appreciate any information and would be glad to assist in
> any way I can. And myself personally, I’d absolutely appreciate
> someone else taking the lead on this, because with other issues I’m
> working on, I would be unlikely to put serious solo effort into this
> anytime soon.
> 
> Cheers,
> -Shaun Gosse
> CXFS Windows
> SGI
> 
> From: xfs-bounces@oss.sgi.com [mailto:xfs-bounces@oss.sgi.com] On
> Behalf Of Yuji Saeki
> Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2013 5:25 PM
> To: xfs@oss.sgi.com
> Subject: XFS...Windows?
> 
> Congratulations on your file system, it’s quite nice. I’ve benchmarked
> it myself, it’s very impressive. I’m curious though, is there are
> thought to a Windows driver? If someone ported the most current-stable
> version to Windows (free) under the same license ‘GNU Lesser General
> Public License’ with entire credit to XFS, would SGI be okay with
> that? A ‘no-warranty implied’ (etc) kind of protection of course.
> Quite a few devs that I work with enjoy the XFS filesystem and we dev
> in both Linux and Windows. We’re very interested in making this happen
> with respect to the XFS project.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> xfs mailing list
> xfs@oss.sgi.com
> http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs

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Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra@baylink.com
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St Petersburg FL USA               #natog                      +1 727 647 1274

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[humor] Re: XFS...Windows?

[Jeffrey Hundstad]

On 12/09/2013 10:39 AM, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> On 12/8/13, 5:24 PM, Yuji Saeki wrote:
>> Congratulations on your file system, it’s quite nice. I’ve
>> benchmarked it myself, it’s very impressive. I’m curious though, is
>> there are thought to a Windows driver? If someone ported the most
>> current-stable version to Windows (free) under the same license ‘GNU
>> Lesser General Public License’ with entire credit to XFS
> XFS isn't under the LGPL, it's GPL, as is the rest of the kernel code,
> and the license terms should be quite clear.
>
>> would SGI
>> be okay with that? A ‘no-warranty implied’ (etc) kind of protection
>> of course. Quite a few devs that I work with enjoy the XFS filesystem
>> and we dev in both Linux and Windows. We’re very interested in making
>> this happen with respect to the XFS project.
> I'm not a lawyer, but it's not really an issue of opinion - it's a legal
> matter.  If you can port XFS to Windows while maintaining the terms
> of the license agreements on both ends, you're free to do so.
>
> The technical difficulty of such a task is another matter as well.  :)

<humor>
To keep it standards compliant with your new OS, you'd want to change it 
just a tiny bit to make it incompatible with the normal XFS, patent that 
bit and claim it's an industry standard.
</humor>


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