GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview

(marc.info)

37 points | by sippingabonedry 1 hour ago

10 comments

  • yjftsjthsd-h 25 minutes ago
    From https://orib.dev/gefs.pdf -

    > While snapshot consistency is useful to keep data consistent, disks often fail over time. In order to detect corruption, block pointers contain a hash of the data that they point at. If corrupted data is returned by the underlying storage medium, this is detected via block hashes. And if a programmer error causes the file system to write garbage to disk, this can often be caught early. The corruption is reported, and the damaged data may then be recovered from backups, RAID restoration, or some other means.

    Okay! It's got CoW, snapshots, and data checksums. Therefore, it's good enough to compete with ZFS while being way smaller and permissively licensed. Now I just want it ported to Linux and the other BSDs:)

  • g0xA52A2A 35 minutes ago
    There was a recent presentation on this at EuroBSDCon for those interested.

    https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/NVMSCJ/

    https://exquisite.tube/w/3QQimMdswWJxrsPaJtak2u

  • fn-mote 16 minutes ago
    Is there any chance of proving a filesystem is correct?

    Is this one simple enough that it won’t have bugs??

    Given the issues with well-known filesystems like ZFS and BetterFS, why shouldn’t I expect data-losing bugs in this one?

    • spijdar 12 minutes ago
      I think the premise is basically yes, you should assume there will be data-losing bugs, but:

      1. The filesystem should be reasonably good at detecting an error/corruption state and informing you, and

      2. You should have backups of said data stored elsewhere, and backups should be tested (e.g. to verify that data can be read back)

    • cyberpunk 10 minutes ago
      What well known data-losing bugs are there in zfs? It can be slow, and resource hungry, but afaik it's about as safe as they come (and I've been using it in prod since solaris 10)
  • moody__ 26 minutes ago
    I've been following (and helping test) gefs on 9front for a while now. 9front's nightly builder has been running off of it for quite a while. Ori's done a fantastic job.
  • dchest 37 minutes ago
  • sippingabonedry 1 hour ago
    GEFS: A Good Enough File System https://orib.dev/gefs.pdf
  • geoffbp 33 minutes ago
    > The git repo is hidden on shithub

    Heh :)

  • doublepg23 35 minutes ago
    This is great timing considering I'm currently dealing with FFS corruption after my OpenBSD server lost power during a storm.
  • metalforever 34 minutes ago
    Finally . Very good work team !
  • anthk 33 minutes ago
    Ori B. it's a great programmer, he fixed a small bug on the earlier GeFS on 9front versions in no time. It worked fine in my n270 based Atom netbook under 9front, so it will run perfectly well under OpenBSD in a near future.

    It isn't as resource heavy as ZFS, and it will be more reliable than FFS, for sure.