[RFC] AUFS disabled for 12.04

[Tim Gardner]

On 03/01/2012 03:08 PM, Gary Poster wrote:
> Hi.
>
> aufs was reliable for us on Oneiric when creating ephemeral lxc
> instances based on an underlying template. The most recent overlayfs
> issue that we discovered is today's
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/944386
>
> The summary is that, within an overlayfs, this fails:
>
> gary at garubtosh:~/tmp$ touch 3
> gary at garubtosh:~/tmp$ chmod 0444 3
> gary at garubtosh:~/tmp$ ln 3 4
> ln: failed to create hard link `4' => `3': Operation not permitted
>
> That error makes xvfb unable to start, in this particular case.
>
> I'd feel a *lot* more comfortable if aufs were still around, in case we
> end up not finding the next overlayfs bug until it is too late for our
> project's delivery.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Gary
>

In light of the concerns about overlayfs being sufficiently cooked in 
time for Precise, Andy Whitcroft and I have decided to re-enable aufs. 
We will continue to advocate for dropping aufs in favor of a sufficient 
upstream solution at each development cycle. This means that aufs _will_ 
disappear in future backported LTS kernels.

In other words, don't bet your business on aufs.

I am speaking directly to the lxc and server folks. aufs has _one_ 
maintainer, is enormously complex, is difficult to integrate with each 
new kernel version, and will _never_ be accepted upstream.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com