Linux Storage News Archives

Linus Torvalds took to reverting some code tonight within the mainline Linux kernel that inadvertently had broken support having filenames with ❤️ and other special Unicode characters in filenames when on file-systems with case-folding (optional case insensitive file/folder name) support.

While we are awaiting the release of OpenZFS 2.3 that has been seeing release candidates since early October, OpenZFS 2.2.7 is out today as the newest stable release of this ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

A promising patch for the Linux kernel is optimizing the locking contention and scattered address space for the MD bitmap code to improve both the storage throughput and latency.

There are a few Network File System (NFS) enhancements worth pointing out with the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel.

Merged last week back toward the start of the Linux 6.13 merge window were a number of interesting IO_uring enhancements for this first major kernel version of 2025.

For those making use of the Microsoft exFAT file-system on Linux systems, the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel brings an optimization that will help some operations by reducing the FAT chain traversal.

The Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates were sent out on Monday for Linux 6.13 and include one very interesting new feature for this file-system: device aliasing as a means of being able to temporarily carve out a portion of the partition for other purposes.

The FUSE feature enhancements were submitted today for the Linux 6.13 kernel as part of improving the file-system in user-space capabilities.

Huawei engineer Zhang Yi posted a set of nine patches today for enabling large folio support for regular files with the EXT4 file-system. These patches enable large folios for EXT4 on regular files except when using FSVERITY, FSCRYPT, or the journaled data mode. Long story short, these large folio patches can deliver some nice performance gains for both reads and writes.

Following the recent messaging from Bcachefs lead developer Kent Oversteet that Bcachefs changes for Linux 6.13 were rejected on the basis of his Code of Conduct, the Linux CoC committee has now formally announced their decision.

The XFS file-system updates were merged yesterday for the ongoing Linux 6.13 merge window.

In addition to the pull requests managed by Microsoft engineer Christian Brauner for VFS untorn writes for atomic writes with XFS and EXT4, Tmpfs case insensitive file/folder support, new Rust file abstractions, and the renewed multi-grain timestamps work, another interesting Linux 6.13 pull submitted by Brauner revolves around VFS file enhancements.

Linus Torvalds just merged the change to the Linux 6.13 kernel that goes ahead and deletes the ReiserFS file-system from the source tree. Removing ReiserFS from the Linux tree lightens the kernel by 32.8k lines of code.

While the Bcachefs feature changes for Linux 6.13 were already submitted even before the Linux 6.12 stable kernel was released, merging these changes are supposedly on hold due to the kernel's Code of Conduct (CoC) board.

All of the block subsystem changes were sent out today for the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel, including a prominent set of NVMe additions.

Along with the early Bcachefs pull request for Linux 6.13, SUSE engineer David Sterba submitted all of the Btrfs file-system feature updates in an early pull request for this next kernel version. Btrfs is seeing new performance optimizations and other enhancements for Linux 6.13.

Bcachefs has now joined the party of various kernel components sending in preemptive pull requests ahead of the Linux 6.13 merge window that is expected to open following the expected Linux 6.12 release on Sunday.

In addition to the EXT4 and XFS atomic write support, another interesting pull request sent in today by Microsoft's Christian Brauner is adding case-insensitive file/folder support for the Tmpfs file-system to benefit use-cases like Wine / Steam Play compatibility layers and sandboxing/container facilities like Flatpak.

Prominent Linux developer Christian Brauner with Microsoft has begun sending out various pull requests of VFS feature changes for the imminent Linux 6.13 merge window. One of the interesting early pull requests is the VFS untorn writes series with getting atomic writes support enabled for the EXT4 and XFS file-system.

Ahead of the expected final Linux 6.12 stable kernel release this weekend, a last round of Bcachefs file-system fixes were submitted today for this next kernel version.

As covered last week Linux I/O expert Jens Axboe has been taking a fresh pursuit of uncached buffered I/O for Linux. This "RWF_UNCACHED" work was originally started back in 2019 while a renewed effort around it is showing ~65% faster read/write performance and so far has been extended to work across EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS file-systems.

OpenZFS 2.3 continues working its way toward release as a big step forward for this open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

Linux I/O expert and block/IO_uring maintainer Jens Axboe of Meta has recently revisited his patches around uncached buffered I/O. Back in 2019 the "RWF_UNCACHED" effort was started by Axboe to address a throughput cliff in performance once the page cache fills up. That work faded away but Axboe recently took to crafting a set of fresh patches for implementing uncached buffered I/O and they are showing extremely promising results.

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is adding a device aliasing file feature that could appear in the upcoming Linux v6.13 merge window.

As part of the latest Bcachefs fixes pull request, lead developer Kent Overstreet has provided an update on the bug situation for this advanced copy-on-write open-source file-system.

The Linux NETFS code as a network file-system helper library is seeing patches to help enhance the read performance for solutions like CIFS as well as adding single blob object support.

In addition to Eric Biggers of Google being busy working on various crypto and hashing performance optimizations, the longtime Linux developer has also been working on "dm-inlinecrypt" for better leveraging inline block device encryption.

With ReiserFS having been deprecated for two years with plans to remove it in 2025, the upcoming Linux 6.13 cycle for what will be the first major kernel release of the new year and past the Linux 6.12 LTS kernel is expected to do just that... ReiserFS is set to be stripped from the mainline kernel codebase.

A set of patches sent out today for testing allow for faster truncating on the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) that can yield around a 54% speed-up for deleting files.

OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 released last week with RAIDZ expansion, fast deduplication, and direct IO support among other changes for this ZFS file-system implementation for use on Linux and FreeBSD systems. OpenZFS 2.3-rc2 is out today with a few more interesting changes.

While the Linux 6.12 merge window has been closed for more than one week, the modern NTFS "NTFS3" driver has seen some late feature enhancements as well as some fixes merged today for this new kernel version.

Linus Torvalds merged the newest round of fixes to the experimental Bcachefs file-system, but it's left Linux creator Linus Torvalds frustrated and he's presented two choices for the file-system moving forward due to the continued LKML drama.

OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 is now available for testing as the next major feature release to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

File-systems in user-space continue to become more robust with the latest FUSE updates merged for Linux 6.12.

The Network File System (NFS) changes have been merged for the ongoing Linux 6.12 development cycle. Notable this time with NFS is adding LOCALIO protocol extension support that can lead to fairly "extreme" performance improvements in scenarios where the NFS client and server are on the same host.

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.12 merge window.

Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet has submitted all of the Bcachefs file-system feature patches for the Linux 6.12 kernel merge window. In his pull request he also lays out his ambitions to remove the "EXPERIMENTAL" flag from Bcachefs within the next year.

The OpenZFS project has merged DirectIO (O_DIRECT) support for the ZFS file-system to bypass the ARC for reads and writes.

The XFS file-system changes have been merged for the Linux 6.12 kernel and introduce new ioctls for being able to exchange the contents of two files.

The Btrfs file-system continues marching ahead with the Linux 6.12 kernel.

The MMC updates for the Linux 6.12 kernel include the introduction of a new kernel subsystem for Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB) drivers.

The EROFS read-only open-source file-system has seen initial patches posted today for beginning to re-implement the C code within the Rust programming language for better safety guarantees and the possibility of more performance optimizations.

Jens Axboe submitted the block and IO_uring changes already for the now-open Linux 6.12 merge window. Most notable from this Linux I/O work is adding async discard support to IO_uring.

The EROFS read-only file-system changes have been submitted now for ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.12 merge window. Notable this cycle is EROFS adding support for file-backed mounts.

Ojaswin Mujoo with IBM has posted an initial set of "request for comments" patches implementing extsize hints for EXT4, similar to the hints being worked on for the XFS file-system. This is important work in ultimately striving toward handling non-torn / atomic writes within the EXT4 file-system.

Merged three years ago in Linux 5.12 was IDMAPPED mounts for new use-cases from containers to systemd-homed. IDMAPPED mounts allow for different mounts to expose the same file or directory with different ownership such as for sharing files between multiple users or multiple systems. With time all of the major Linux file-systems have seen support added for IDMAPPED mounts while for Linux 6.12 support is on the way for FUSE file-systems.

Succeeding OpenZFS 2.2.5 from early August is now OpenZFS 2.2.6 that brings various fixes plus newer Linux kernel compatibility.

Linux 6.11 introduces block atomic write support including for NVMe and SCSI devices. With a new set of patches posted this week, atomic write support is wired up for the RAID0 MD code.

Patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list today allow for inline tail support within the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS). This inline tail support allows for saving space when storing many small files and with reduced I/O can lead to faster data copy times.

There's been some Friday night kernel drama on the Linux kernel mailing list... Linus Torvalds has expressed regrets for merging the Bcachefs file-system and an ensuing back-and-forth between the file-system maintainer.