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List:       gfs-devel
Subject:    Re: [gfs-devel] 2.2 kernel functionality requirements for GFS 4.0?
From:       Ken Preslan <kpreslan () sistina ! com>
Date:       2001-01-26 18:40:28
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On Fri, Jan 26, 2001 at 09:07:16AM +0100, Raimund.Schroeder@de.ibm.com wrote:
> I would like to know which kernel level is really ;-) required for the
> production release
> of GFS 4 (here, 'really' means in terms of kernel functionality).
> Before spending some effort in retrofitting the GFS patches back to 2.2.16
> (this may be
> required for Linux/390), I would like to ask whether the requirement of
> kernel 2.2.18 (or
> higher) is merely a currency issue (= "just use the latest stable 2.2
> kernel") or whether
> the production release uses functionality of the 2.2.18 kernel which is not
> available in
> earlier kernels (down to 2.2.16 ;-). I could imagine there may be
> dependencies on,
> e.g., the kernel nfs server code?!
> Could somebody shed some light on this, please? Thanks.

The LFS patch is the biggest thing that requires 2.2.18.  With some hacking
you could probably go back to 2.2.16 if you want.  The issues I can think
of at the moment are:

1)  Backporting the LFS patch looks to be a real pain.  I looked at backporting
it from  2.2.18-pre? to 2.2.17 a while ago.  I eventually ran away screaming.
There is nothing in GFS that specificly requires the patch.  You just don't
get to access big files.

2)  So without the LFS patch, you have to undo a couple small changes made
to GFS to work with it.  There is a one line change in gfs_read_page() and
an extra argument to gfs_readdir().

3)  The NFS server code might be an issue, but I didn't really start looking
at NFS until after 2.2.18 came out, so I don't know.  

> There is another issue: following the mailing list, I have not seen an
> answer to the
> recent question where this lfs-new patch originates. Since the S/390
> platform is not yet
> supported by this lfs-patch, I would like to know where to look or whom to
> contact to get
> our code/patches into it eventually. Or is this some specific GFS-tailored
> lfs-patch?

Our LFS patch is the SUSE patch created by Andrea Arcangeli.  I think it
is mostly just a backport of the 2.4 code.

-- 
Ken Preslan <kpreslan@sistina.com>
Code Monkey
Sistina Software, Inc.

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