[linux-dvb] XFS / Linux 2.4.6 HOWTO and report.

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

Hi,

this may be slightly off topic, but as XFS has been discussed
here several times and a few questions were left open, I think
I should contribute my experience.

I had both reliability (data loss after power failure, kernel
panic during a 2-week vacation) and performance (slows down a
lot when the disk gets full) problems with Reiserfs, so I
decided to install Kernel 2.4.6 and XFS. Here is what I did:

*  Distribution: SuSE 7.2 with hand-configured kernel.

*  Downloaded kernel 2.4.6 from kernel.org.

*  Downloaded linux-2.4.6-xfs-07052001.patch.bz2 from
   ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download/patches

*  Downloaded xfsprogs-1.2.0.src.tar.gz from
   ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download/Release-1.0/cmd_tars

*  Unpacked kernel 2.4.6 into /usr/src/linux-2.4.6

*  Applied linux-2.4.6-xfs-07052001.patch.

*  copied .config over from my old kernel directory, ran 
     make oldconfig
   and answered all questions with <cr>

*  Ran 
     make xconfig
   and enabled xfs.

*  Changed the link /usr/src/linux, so it now points to
   the new directory /usr/src/linux-2.4.6.
   I do not know if that is recommended, but so far it did not hurt.

*  Compiled, installed and booted the new 2.4.6-xfs kernel.

*  Compiled and installed xfsprogs-1.2.0.

*  Ran 
     mkfs.xfs /dev/hdg1

*  Mounted /dev/hdg1

*  Copied 66GB of vdr movies to the mounted disk.

% df -hT /video
Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdg1      xfs     93G   66G   28G  70% /video

*  Ran configure, make clean and make install in my
   lirc directory.

*  Ran make clean and make insmod in the DVB/driver directory.

*  Started vdr.


All of these steps worked without any problems, except for the
fact that "make bzlilo" intalled System.map and vmlinuz on "/"
instead of "/boot". I moved them to /boot manually. Does anyone
know what I did wrong? Is this a "feature" of 2.4.6?




Here are some additional links:

*  Main download site: ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download

*  Main web site: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs

*  FAQ:  http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html

*  Mailing list: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/mail.html


I have been working with XFS under IRIX for about 7 years now
and there has never been so much as a glitch with it. 

For the less adventuresome user:  I heard that XFS 1.0.1 will
be out within a week or so. It should provide a complete Linux
2.4.5 source tree with the patch already applied.

For the more adventuresome user: they also provide a CVS tree
that keeps up with the latest kernel.



Hope that helps,

Carsten.


P.S.: 

I am using vdr 0.8.3 with a CVS snapshot of the DVB drivers
taken on June 19th. After reading here that newer CVS versions 
of the DVB drivers do not work with vdr, I did not dare to
install a later driver version. Does anyone know what the
latest version is that does work with vdr 0.8.3?
I guess I will also post that question separately.


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