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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday August 23 2015, @07:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the is-it-named-systemd dept.

An ex-Google engineer is developing a new file system for Linux, with the hopes that it can offer a speedier and more advanced way of storing data on servers.

After a number of years of development, the Bcache File System (Bcachefs) "is more or less feature complete -- nothing critical should be missing," wrote project head Kent Overstreet, in an e-mail to the Linux Kernel Mailing List late Thursday.

Linux currently has plenty of working file systems, though no one file system seems to be best-suited for all uses.

The main goal of Bcachefs is to match the speed of traditional Linux file systems with the advanced scalability and reliability of newer file systems, Overstreet wrote.

Although not a sexy technology, file systems provide the interface to the operating system for storing files on a disk.

The most widely used file system among Linux users is the decades-old Gnu/Linux Extended Filesystem series of filesystems -- Ext4 being the latest release. But many organizations and users have gravitated towards other file systems, such as Btrfs or XFS, to handle very large amounts of data, or to use advanced techniques in ensuring data integrity.

This file system evolved from the work Overstreet did at Google, where he worked as a software engineer for two years from 2011 until 2013 to create caching software.

Bcachefs has all the features of a modern file system, Overstreet wrote, including checksumming to ensure data integrity, compression to save space, caching for quick response, and copy-on-write, which offers the ability for a single file to be accessed by multiple parties at once.

...

Overstreet is working on the file system on his own time, without outside funding. He is seeking other administrators and developers to test the system and even contribute to its development.

Nonetheless, the release of Bcachefs seems to have met with cautious optimism by the Linux professionals on the Hacker News online forum, though one contributor did say of Overstreet that "I hope the guy has a large stash in his bank. File systems take notoriously long to stabilize."


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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday August 23 2015, @11:46PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday August 23 2015, @11:46PM (#226759) Homepage

    It seems like the summary's description of bcachefs is completely wrong. Here's what I got from the bcachefs webpage:

    bcachefs itself is not a standalone file system. Instead, it provides a cache for the actual filesystem. The idea is that you have your main file system on an HDD running, e.g., ext4, then you have an SSD bcachefs on top acting as a cache. Thus in theory you can get the performance of an SSD while still having the cheap massive storage of HDDs.

    This idea is related to my thesis, so I'm excited to see an actual implementation.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @12:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @12:44AM (#226774)

    From what it looks like I think he is building bcachefs ontop of the existing bcache stuff he did earlier.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by GDX on Monday August 24 2015, @12:54AM

    by GDX (1950) on Monday August 24 2015, @12:54AM (#226776)

    You are wrong actually bcachefs is a new filesystem evolved from bcache, bcache is the actual disc cache system and the developers found that they where close to create a real file system an then decided to create bcachefs basing it on bcache.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @09:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2015, @09:06AM (#226938)

    Where does the quote end? Is "This idea is related to my thesis, so I'm excited to see an actual implementation." still part of the quote, or your own text?

    Quote marks and quote tags are there fore a reason. Please use them.