From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 2683 invoked from network); 21 Jul 2020 04:22:40 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 21 Jul 2020 04:22:40 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id CDAD19BA9E; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 14:22:37 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 540BB9BA32; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 14:21:18 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id B6F419BA32; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 14:21:14 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 323 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 14:21:13 AEST Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 465B09BA30 for ; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 14:21:13 +1000 (AEST) Received: from callcc.thunk.org (pool-96-230-252-158.bstnma.fios.verizon.net [96.230.252.158]) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id 06L4Fl7R026710 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:15:48 -0400 Received: by callcc.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id 89EE1420304; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:15:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:15:47 -0400 From: tytso@mit.edu To: Grant Taylor Message-ID: <20200721041547.GH388817@mit.edu> References: <4fabd785-3763-d100-b97d-0a0a7377b833@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> <13529.1594950045@hop.toad.com> <20200717015914.GA12704@mcvoy.com> <20200717033555.GA18565@mcvoy.com> <0b2edf76-7199-4fc8-80bb-abeb00bb1334@www.fastmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Subject: Re: [TUHS] H.J. Lu Bootable Root & Base System disks X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Sorry for not responding on this thread earlier; I've been pretty swamped lately. Xiafs was introduced at about the same time of ext2; Wikipedia states that "Initially, Xiafs was more stable than ext2, but being a fairly minimalistic modification of the MINIX file system, it was not very well suited for future extension." The first part wasn't quite accurate. It turns out that xiafs had the same bug as ext2, but ext2 had the necessary sanity checking so that it actually issued a warning when the bug was triggered, where xiafs just silently corrupted the file system. The real issue was that xiafs was mostly a one-person show (namely Frank Xia) and he suffered blowback when he tried to rename xiafs to linuxfs, which was interpreted by many as a marketing effort --- about as tone-deaf as Stallman trying to jawbone people to rename "Linux" to "LiGNUx" ten years later. And xiafs was technically worse compared to ext2, and ext2 had a larger number of developers. So xiafs never really stood much of a chance. Also, by that point, very few people were actually using HJ's boot/root disks. Most developers had moved on to the MCC distribution by that time, since it was more comprehensive, and it was easier to bootstrap a working development system. So to be honest, I had never noticed that HJ was trying to use xiafs in his boot/root disks. Cheers, - Ted