Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?
From: Jan Kara
Date: Mon Apr 04 2022 - 08:55:54 EST
On Mon 04-04-22 12:18:02, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> Hi Pavel,
>
> On Mon, Apr 04, 2022 at 12:07:32PM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > > Well, if someone uses Reiserfs they better either migrate to some other
> > > filesystem or start maintaining it. It is as simple as that because
> > > currently there's nobody willing to invest resources in it for quite a few
> > > years and so it is just a question of time before it starts eating people's
> > > data (probably it already does in some cornercases, as an example there are
> > > quite some syzbot reports for it)...
> >
> > Yes people should migrate away from Reiserfs. I guess someone should
> > break the news to Arch Linux ARM people.
> >
> > But I believe userbase is bigger than you think and it will not be
> > possible to remove reiserfs anytime soon.
>
> I was about to say the opposite until I noticed that one of my main
> dev machine has its kernel git dir on it because it's an old FS from
> a previous instance of this machine before an upgrade and it turns out
> that this FS still had lots of available space to store git trees :-/
:)
> So maybe you're right and there are still a bit more than expected out
> there. However I really think that most users who still have one are in
> the same situation as I am, they're not aware of it. So aside big fat
> warnings at mount time (possibly with an extra delay), there's nothing
> that will make that situation change.
>
> At the very least disabling it by default in Kconfig and in distros
> should be effective. I really don't think that there are still users
> who regularly update their system and who have it on their rootfs, but
> still having data on it, yes, possibly. The earlier they're warned,
> the better.
Yes, we start with a warning now. Say a year before we really do remove it,
my plan is to refuse to mount it unless you pass a "I really know what I'm
doing" mount option so that we make sure people who possibly missed a
warning until that moment are aware of the deprecation and still have an
easy path and some time to migrate.
Regarding distros, I know that SUSE (and likely RH) do not offer reiserfs
in their installers for quite some time, it is unsupported for the
enterprise offerings (so most if not all paying customers have migrated
away from it). The notice was in LWN, Slashdot, and perhaps other news
sites so perhaps other distro maintainers do notice sooner rather than
later. I can specifically try to reach to Arch Linux given Pavel's notice
to give them some early warning.
Honza
--
Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
SUSE Labs, CR