Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 2 Mar 2001 22:16:16 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 2 Mar 2001 22:16:06 -0500 Received: from [211.100.92.132] ([211.100.92.132]:35590 "HELO lustre.us.mvd") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Fri, 2 Mar 2001 22:15:53 -0500 Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 14:38:32 -0800 (PST) From: "Peter J. Braam" To: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: [Announce] SnapFS Snapshot File System alpha release Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org SnapFS - Snapshot File System Release: alpha1 Requires: Linux 2.2.18 or later, Ext3 and EA. WWW site: http://www.mountainviewdata.com/technology/snapfs Mountain View Data, Inc is announcing the first release of SnapFS. SnapFS is a file system enhancement of Ext3 to bring fully featured snapshots to Linux. (You can use SnapFS with Ext2 but there is no file system recovery tool.) Making a snapshot of a file system allows the file and directory layout at particular points in time to remain available read only. This is done through careful management of multiple versions of inodes. SnapFS manages modifications to files and versions of files at the block level to avoid space and CPU overhead. Our white papers describe the design in more detail. Snapshots are made almost instantaneously and typical usage is to make a snapshot before a backup or major system administration. SnapFS allows dynamic creation and removal of snapshots, and can roll back a file system to a snapshot. SnapFS comes with utilities that can find incremental backup data extremely fast and SnapFS manages disk block layout in such a way that LAN free backup programs can take advantage of it. SnapFS relies on Ext3 for recovery and on the Extended Attribute package for storing versioning information. The current release is usable, but has some known and likely some unknown bugs. Please backup your file systems before playing with SnapFS and play at your own risk. SnapFS is provided under the GPL. Mountain View Data plans to release additional configuration and management tools for SnapFS as commercial products. Acknowledgements: Stephen Tweedie has been instrumental in providing a journal interface that supports filtering file systems like InterMezzo and SnapFS. Andreas Dilger wrote the first version of the Ext2 snap api, and Andreas Gruenbacher has helped us with extended attribute code. Others are helping us with possible ports to 2.4, ReiserFS, XFS and JFS. SnapFS is being developed by Mountain View Data. It was designed and partially written by Peter Braam. The development is led by Harrison Xing and Eric Mei in the Beijing office of Mountain View Data. William Wei has helped with initial QA. Michael Gao and Thomas Corley have helped with the WWW site and documentation. Brian Murrell packaged SnapFS for a demo at LinuxWorld. -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/