On 8/30/07, Paul Mattal <paul@mattal.com> wrote:

Every so often I try again to figure out how to make AUFS coexist happily with Arch, and I usually end up failing.

So I'm asking for some help puzzling this one out.

AUFS requires a 3-line kernel patch, which appears to expose one function which is needed by AUFS to enable proper interaction with NFS:

http://aufs.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/aufs/aufs/lhash.patch

When the unionfs patches are applied, this patch cannot be cleanly applied! Though they don't directly conflict, they modify adjacent lines so patch can't find the right place to patch.

What I'm trying to figure out is some way we can have both unionfs and aufs as options against kernel26 without having to recompile the kernel, in some way that will be feasible to maintain long-term. Any ideas?

Anyone else interested in using AUFS know anything about this?

We use to do root-on-nfs diskless workstations against a common base root filesystem, allowing individual workstations to modify their own root filesystem using a writeable aufs layer. Unionfs is specifically deficient when used in combination with nfs, and aufs is proving quite superior.

Even if you haven't any ideas, thanks for listening!

I'd be interested in helping doing this - of course we'd just have to munge one patch or the other, but it's still probably straightforward. Problem is I wouldn't have time to get to it for some time. How about this, because collaboration rocks like this, give me some times when you will be available over some direct medium (jabber, irc, whatever) and we can get down to business and crack this out pretty quickly, I'm sure.