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Success getting files off SGI XFS-formatted disks using "modern" hardware - Printable Version

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RE: Success getting files off SGI XFS-formatted disks using "modern" hardware - vishnu - 01-15-2025

Disclaimer-wise, I have not read this entire thread, but the sgi filesystem (xfs) is fully-supported by Linux.


RE: Success getting files off SGI XFS-formatted disks using "modern" hardware - weblacky - 01-15-2025

(01-15-2025, 08:01 AM)vishnu Wrote:  Disclaimer-wise, I have not read this entire thread, but the sgi filesystem (xfs) is fully-supported by Linux.

I'll remind everyone that this is in fact a well discussed topic, and I have confirmed through other postings and looking at the changelog myself. So this is not true as of early 2017.  

From: https://fossies.org/linux/xfsprogs/doc/CHANGES
xfsprogs-4.10.0-rc1 (15 Feb 2017) > remove old Irix support (Christoph Hellwig)

All modern Linux distributions only support XFS V3 and higher!  This has been confirmed by multiple members as well as myself. There are still distributions online of Linux from that period that you can install and pull in easily.

But as of version 4.10.0-rc1... You can no longer read an XFS file systems V1 and V2 produced on the Irix operating system.

This does not affect EFS, my understanding is EFS works just fine, which is sort of a sad statement.


RE: Success getting files off SGI XFS-formatted disks using "modern" hardware - vishnu - 01-15-2025

XFS is open source, Linux distributions, or well I guess Slackware at least, provide the option of using XFS as the filesystem upon installation.


RE: Success getting files off SGI XFS-formatted disks using "modern" hardware - weblacky - 01-15-2025

(01-15-2025, 09:05 AM)vishnu Wrote:  XFS is open source, Linux distributions, or well I guess Slackware at least, provide the option of using XFS as the filesystem upon installation.
 
You are CORRECT that MODERN XFS is supported, it will use XFS v5 (3rd Gen XFS Inode format). Inode version 3 and higher is supported in Linux NOW. 

You're welcome to try this for yourself. All you have to do is get an XFS disk image from IRIX and try to mount it. You'll get an inode v3 warning that claims the file system is corrupt and it doesn't know what it's doing.

IRIX XFS before 6.5.5 (https://web.archive.org/web/20230324180850/https://pixelbart.net/SGI/IRIX/pdf/irix.6.5.5.pdf) was XFS inode v1, 6.5.5 introduced XFS Inode v2, see link on Page 8.  Before that was v1.

Inode V1 and v2 support was PULLED from xfsprogs when I indicated (Feb 2017) because they didn't want to maintain and support the older inode format anymore. So Linux "used to" support all inode revisions of XFS. As of early 2017, it only supports the "modern" versions.  Irix NEVER supported XFS inode v3.

See Section 18.1 "Inode Core" :https://ftp.ntu.edu.tw/linux/utils/fs/xfs/docs/xfs_filesystem_structure.pdf.

Old XFS inode support was discarded due to maintenance decisions as the old UNIX OS was considered a dead platform and therefore they didn't care about data archiving or reading old disks or tapes. They didn't want to maintain the code base that had to know the old XFS Inode format algorithm behavior in the Linux Kernel driver.


Irixfanatic - Irixfanatic - 02-08-2025

Hello gentlemen!
Thank you for this post!

I’m running a tough book with PCMCIA slot.
I had an older 1480 adaptec laying around, and so I figured try my luck with some irix drives lol
Was able to image drives onto .img file, and was also able to “clone” the drive onto an identical drive. However, when booting up the new cloned drive the software gives a bunch of errors as if certain files are not where they at supposed to be. Original drive is clean with no errors. 
I tried this process with 2 other drives as destination, and I get the exact same issue!

I’m using Ubuntu 22.0
Command:
dd if=/usb/OGdrive.img of=/dev/sda bs=512 conv=sync, noerror 

Any idea if it could be the PCMCIA card? Should I use the 1460? Due to these errors, I was planning on also using the older Ubuntu version 4 and 8 like OP recommends but haven’t gotten around to it. Just strange to me that the OS would have something to do with the errors.

Thank you for all your help!