XFS In Linux 3.10 To Put On Extra Protection

The XFS file-system with the forthcoming Linux 3.10 kernel will have an experimental feature for CRC protection of meta-data.

The XFS file-system pull request for the Linux 3.10 merge window was submitted on Thursday to the kernel mailing list.

The main feature is CRC protection for on-disk meta-data structures. Basically, the meta-data to the file-system can now handle a cylic redundancy check (CRC) to check for structural changes. This new level of protection, however, requires using an updated mkfs.xfs utility for creating the file-system with the new feature bits enabled.

Aside from the CRC meta-data protection, there's various changes surrounding speculative pre-allocation, I/O errors, code refactoring, and numerous other fixes. Overall, it's not too exciting for the XFS file-system updates in Linux 3.10 besides the new CRC meta-data support.