Ceph Sees "Lots Of Exciting Things" For Linux 5.3 Kernel

For those making use of the Ceph fault-tolerant storage platform, a number of updated kernel bits are landing in Linux 5.3.

Ceph for Linux 5.3 is bringing an addition to speed-up reads/discards/snap-diffs on sparse images, snapshot creation time is now exposed to support features like "restore previous versions", support for security xattrs (currently limited to SELinux), addressing a missing feature bit so the kernel client's Ceph features are now "luminous", better consistency with Ceph FUSE, and changing the time granularity from 1us to 1ns. There are also bug fixes and other work as part of the Ceph code for Linux 5.3. As maintainer Ilya Dryomov put it, "Lots of exciting things this time!"

The complete list of Ceph changes for Linux 5.3 can be found via the kernel mailing list.