“IBM may be able to include a Linux port for its JFS journaling
filesystem in the 2.4 kernel”
“Nick Petreley wrote last year… that Linux needed three items
to become more fault-tolerant, and thus better able to compete on
high-end boxes in the enterprise. Those three things were a
journaling filesystem, fault tolerance, and data clusters. Someone
must have been listening; Linux now has four, count ’em, four
journaling filesystems in the cooker. Those filesystems, and the
pending 2.4 kernel’s vastly improved scalability, won’t give Nick
everything he asked for, but will surely make Linux more attractive
to users of high-end systems.”
“One company that listened to Nick must have been IBM, which,
believe it or not, has become a major player in Linux and open
source. IBM’s initial Apache flirtation has blossomed into a
virtual organization called the Linux Technology Center (LTC).
Under the LTC umbrella, IBM has become involved in many diverse
projects, supported by teams positioned around the world. … This
column deals with the port of JFS from AIX to Linux.”
“I know, the ReiserFS is much further along, and will almost
certainly be the first journaling filesystem included in the 2.4
kernel. ext3 is coming along too, as is SGI’s entry in the race,
XFS. But JFS has an advantage: the hometown edge. LTC’s JFS
team is located right here in Austin, Texas. Steve Best, who leads
the small team working on JFS, gave the Austin LUG an informal
presentation on the port’s status just a few weeks ago. I was
there; Best said that the project, working on open source code and
with the open source community, was the best job he had ever
had.”