From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from out-211.mta1.migadu.com (out-211.mta1.migadu.com [95.215.58.211]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7606B1FDD for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2023 16:35:40 +0000 (UTC) Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 12:35:33 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=linux.dev; s=key1; t=1694363738; h=from:from:reply-to:subject:subject:date:date:message-id:message-id: to:to:cc:cc:mime-version:mime-version:content-type:content-type: content-transfer-encoding:content-transfer-encoding: in-reply-to:in-reply-to:references:references; bh=IlFgYrgZJBPcAFO2CPQXXZD5SNwruJdgIJyhfYvD4cc=; b=iOXHp0FwXSeufxioyD/lw6n4j6DfgwaT3lKncyCUs4kg0bHlxOPZ/TlI1aESJ73dP9AFv1 6TRsEjuJwRsjiF/k8o+HxnHaMq0kBUO5+i3Kduxyk2Z8iMMSthEsJsSeoOKkGULmEa2kVM zLDo5xzZdPeoLDStZysGptdYjN0EjC8= X-Report-Abuse: Please report any abuse attempt to abuse@migadu.com and include these headers. From: Kent Overstreet To: Geert Uytterhoeven Cc: James Bottomley , Matthew Wilcox , Dave Chinner , Christoph Hellwig , ksummit@lists.linux.dev, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS/KERNEL SUMMIT] Trust and maintenance of file systems Message-ID: <20230910163533.ysbcztauujywrbk4@moria.home.lan> References: <8dd2f626f16b0fc863d6a71561196950da7e893f.camel@HansenPartnership.com> <20230909224230.3hm4rqln33qspmma@moria.home.lan> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: X-Migadu-Flow: FLOW_OUT On Sun, Sep 10, 2023 at 10:19:30AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > Hi Kent, > > On Sun, Sep 10, 2023 at 12:42 AM Kent Overstreet > wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 09, 2023 at 08:50:39AM -0400, James Bottomley wrote: > > > So why can't we figure out that easier way? What's wrong with trying to > > > figure out if we can do some sort of helper or library set that assists > > > supporting and porting older filesystems. If we can do that it will not > > > only make the job of an old fs maintainer a lot easier, but it might > > > just provide the stepping stones we need to encourage more people climb > > > up into the modern VFS world. > > > > What if we could run our existing filesystem code in userspace? > > > > bcachefs has a shim layer (like xfs, but more extensive) to run nearly > > the entire filesystem - about 90% by loc - in userspace. > > > > Right now this is used for e.g. userspace fsck, but one of my goals is > > to have the entire filesystem available as a FUSE filesystem. I'd been > > planning on doing the fuse port as a straight fuse implementation, but > > OTOH if we attempted a sh vfs iops/aops/etc. -> fuse shim, then we would > > have pretty much everything we need to run any existing fs (e.g. > > reiserfs) as a fuse filesystem. > > > > It'd be a nontrivial project with some open questions (e.g. do we have > > to lift all of bufferheads to userspace?) but it seems worth > > investigating. > > 1. https://xkcd.com/1200/ (not an exact match, but you should get the idea), > 2. Once a file system is removed from the kernel, would the user space > implementation be maintained better? This would be for the filesystems that aren't getting maintained and tested, to eliminate accidental breakage from in-kernel refactoring and changing of APIs. Getting that code out of the kernel would also greatly help with security concerns.