XFS Kernel Howto

The CERN xfs 2.6 kernel is available from the following repositiory http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/cern/slc306/i386/kernel26/RPMS/

Follow the steps below to establish a CERN xfs kernel (2.4) on a machine.
These instuctions are based on a Scientific Linux (version 3.05 and above) OS.
Three RPM's need to be installed, these can be attained using wget with the link location as an argument.

• go to CERN XFS repository to get the RPM's ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/305/i386/contrib/RPMS/xfs/
• wget the following sotware from the repository

 kernel-smp-2.4.21-37.EL.XFS.i686.rpm
 kernel-module-xfs-2.4.21-37.EL.XFSsmp-1.3.3-1.SL.i686.rpm
 xfsprogs-2.6.13-1.i386.rpm

• install (rpm -ivh) the kernel. DO NOT upgrade (rpm -Uvh) the kernel as this will overwrite the current kernel. Installing gives the option of using the current kernel or the XFS one.

 # rpm ivh "kernel rpm"
 # rpm ivh "kernel module rpm"
 # rpm ivh "xfsprogs"

• look at /boot/grub/menu.lst. The newly installed XFS kernel should be the first kernel stated. If not already =0, change default=0 in the /etc/fstab file. The machine will now boot into the XFS kernel by default.
• look at /etc/fstab.

unmount and then comment (hash) out any mounted jfs filesystems. ex2 and ex3 filesystems are fine.

• reboot the machine

 # shutdown -r now

• To show which kernel, hopefully 2.4.21-37.EL.XFSsmp or later version, the machine is using.

 # uname -a

• Issue the following command to format a filesystem as an xfs filesystem

 # mkfs.xfs -f /dev/"filesystem" 

• Add mount point in /etc/fstab e.g.

/dev/sdc3 /gridstorage/sdc3 xfs defaults 1 3 then mount /dev/filesystem (/dev/sdc3 in above example)