JFS File-System Seeing Minor Stability Improvements With Linux 6.7

Bcachefs was merged for Linux 6.7 and Btrfs is seeing some shiny new features with this next kernel version. But Linux 6.7 isn't just about leading-edge file-system fun: the three decade old IBM Journaled File-System (JFS) is even seeing some minor changes.

While not widely used these days and IBM hasn't been endorsing its use for over a decade and a half, the Journaled File-System for the Linux kernel still sees the occasional code changes. With the ongoing Linux 6.7 merge window there are a handful of patches. The JFS pull request from Oracle engineer Dave Kleikamp simply sums up the file-system changes as "minor stability improvements."

These JFS changes for Linux 6.7 bring a couple array index out-of-bounds fixes, adding extra validity checks, and now defining the xtree root and page independently for more sane array bounds checking.

That's mostly the extent of the JFS changes these days with occasional fixes or minor stability work. At least though it's seeing those rare improvements and leading to it still being maintained in-tree as opposed to ReiserFS on its way to being removed. Earlier this year there was talk of orphaning the JFS file-system with even Dave Kleikamp not being opposed, but since a few long-time JFS users chimed in, there hasn't been any further movement towards its orphaning or removal.