The JFS File-System Remains In Sad Shape With The Upstream Linux Kernel

While at the start of 2023 was talk among kernel developers for orphaning the JFS file-system at a time that developers began the processes toward removing the ReiserFS file-system driver, the Journaled File-System so far remains within the mainline kernel and not yet officially orphaned.

JFS these days mostly sees just random bug fixes and difficult to compete with modern file-system options like Btrfs, XFS, the out-of-tree OpenZFS, and even Bcachefs. The last time there was major work on JFS to report about on Phoronix was a decade ago when SSD TRIM support was added to JFS. Indeed when scanning through the "JFS" commits this morning in Linux Git over the past few years, it's mostly random (small) bug fixes as part of other kernel changes. But still there is seemingly some use of JFS by a small group of Linux users.

I was reminded of JFS this weekend when seeing a JFS patch work its way to Linux 6.10-rc4 via the unusual "char/misc" pull. Greg Kroah-Hartman commented in this week's char/misc pull request:

"jfs bugfix for a buffer overflow

The jfs bugfix is in here as I didn't know where else to put it, and it's been ignored for a while as the filesystem seems to be abandoned and I'm tired of seeing the same issue reported in multiple places."

The JFS patch is a small one to fix a buffer overflow for invalid xattrs. But it does once again raise the question of when JFS will be finally sunset in the upstream Linux kernel.