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back to article SUSE Linux moves to 3.0 kernel with SP2

SUSE Linux, the commercial Linux distributor owned by software conglomerate Attachmate, is moving up to the Linux 3.0 kernel and also taking the btrfs file system mainstream alongside Linux container virtual private servers. These and other changes to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 are contained in Service Pack 2, available …

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  1. Crazy Operations Guy
    WTF?

    Why is this jsut a service pack?

    They are changing most of the OS, so unless I misunderstand version numbers, this should at least warrant a bump in the MAJOR version number. Or has the open source world turned to bumping version numbers whenever they damn well feel like. I would also expect them to wait until their next scheduled release to use the new kernel to let it mature and to work out any bugs, or at least that is what I would expect from a company that puts 'enterprise' in their product title and wants me to believe that it is suitable for enterprise workloads.

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    1. regorama
      Reply Icon

      Re: Why is this jsut a service pack?

      There is a lot that hasn't changed. E.g. they've stuck with GNOME 2.28 and KDE 4.3. Firefox and Libreoffice are the same versions as in SP1. I think there's actually fewer changes in versions of things between SP1 and SP2 than there were between the original release and SP1, despite SP2 taking nearly twice as long to appear.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why no ext4?

    I am curious why there's no built-in support for ext4?

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  3. Nate Amsden

    did suse ever support ext4 on the server?

    doing a quick search reveals they supported ext4 on SUSE 11 desktop, though don't see mention of server, did they just skip it ?

    interesting that the latest one offers ext4 in read only mode only.

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  4. James Loughner
    Linux

    BTRFS

    Hmmm BTRFS is available in OprnSUSE 12.1 but it seems to be very shaky. Lots of problems reported and no fsck utilities for it. Default FS in OpenSUSE is ext4, which is rock stable. Go figure.

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  5. AdamWill

    edgy

    (note: I work for Red Hat). as james loughner says, that's a pretty...optimistic take on btrfs. it doesn't have a usable fsck utility yet, and people who are using btrfs still seem to hit issues with it fairly regularly. Fedora still doesn't consider it stable enough for use as the default filesystem and Fedora is, erm, famous for not being *particularly* conservative about such things. good to see they're working hard on it, though. it's interesting that the PR seems to be very gung ho on btrfs, but never *quite* says that it's actually the default filesystem now, and reading between the lines i suspect the default is still ext3/ext4 (which would be a pretty sensible choice).

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    1. regorama
      Reply Icon

      Re: edgy

      On SLED the default file system is still ext3, I've not checked SLES yet. Their promotion of btrfs puzzles me a bit, I have the same doubts you cite. Also my experience of running virtual machines with btrfs just to see what happens shows it being prone to declaring there's no disk space left even when there's actually loads.

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    2. mrunix
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: edgy. read release notes, not between the lines; then write posts, not the other way around.

      please read, so you can stop suspecting and start apologizing.

      regards

      mraix

      http://www.novell.com/linux/releasenotes/i386/SUSE-SLES/11-SP2/#fate-306585

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  6. PopoHenrod

    Can I Haz Release Notes?

    Dear Gentle Commentards,

    RE: James and Adam "no fsck utilities for it". From the release notes:

    "Check and repair functionality ("scrub") is available as part of the btrfs command line tools. "Scrub" is aimed to verify data and metadata assuming the tree structures are fine. "Scrub" can (and should) be run periodically on a mounted file system: it runs as a background process during normal operation.

    With the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2, the long awaited "fsck.btrfs" tool is available in the SUSE Linux Enterprise update repositories."

    RE: Default filesystem :

    Still ext3. The Release Notes from SLES 11 mark the change from ReiserFS to ext3. Nothing in the SP1 nor SP2 release notes indicates any shift away from ext3.

    RE: Crazy "Why just a sp?" :

    Maybe because the 3.0 version of the kernel is not a major change? Check it out - Linus changed the versioning because he wanted to, not because it marked a significant change in the kernel. But who cares? All of these numbers are made up, arbitrary.

    Cheers,

    PopoHenrod

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    1. AdamWill
      Reply Icon

      Re: Can I Haz Release Notes?

      popo: scrub doesn't assure the filesystem will never become inconsistent, hence the need for fsck. fsck does indeed *exist* now, but if you look a bit closer, you find that it is a very early release and the advice from upstream is that it can detect filesystem problems but won't actually be able to fix them in many cases and may make things worse. which is not what you want on your enterprise class server.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Reiser FS in comparison??

    We haven't gone back to 2005 have we? Or is the murderer doing updates from his cell now?

    Also looking at that table, apart from the max filesystem and file sizes it looks to me like ext3 has btrs licked. eg ext3 doesn't have defrag because it doesn't need it - but why doesn't btrfs have quotas FFS?

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  8. Nigel 11
    WTF?

    3.0 signifies very little

    Linux folks know will know this, but according to Linus there's no significant reason for the change of major release number. He just got fed up with 2.6.nn when the development process meant that he could see no reason why 2 or 6 would ever be changed, so decided it was time for major version 3.

    https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/29/204

    Actually there WAS a very long-term target finally reached either in the 3.0 release or close thereto. the Big Kernel Lock was finally abolished, after very many years of working towards that goal. It's just coincidence, though.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    With Tinfoil Hat Deployed

    ... my best guess is that SuSE is being paid by M$ to discredit Linux. They royally screwed up on SuSE 11 and with btrfs it seems to be the same now. Can't these clowns accept that Linux users want stability from a distro ??

    Just go for Ubuntu, and I am saying this as a German software engineer.

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    1. mrunix
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: With Tinfoil Hat Deployed --- oh, you mean........

      that the opensuse folk are *payed* to *discredit* you and similar folk ?

      didnt your ubuntu heroes Unity onto yourself all by yourself ?

      didnt your ubuntu heroes by forcing Unity onto users make linux Mint bigger than your Ubuntu in less than 3 months by

      *screwing up royally* ??

      or is that non-factual ?

      :-)

      mrunix

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So it's still missing proper fsck and quotas?

    Great for testing/dev I'm sure, but shouldn't be within a country mile of production. And since Oracle *does* now own ZFS, why not give us that?

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