Following exFAT improvements last year, Microsoft is adding XFS root file system to Mariner

In December last year, Microsoft’s exFAT on Linux received some really hefty gains in terms of performance thanks to Sony. Internal tests showed close to 60% gains in some instances. Speaking of file systems, Microsoft has now added support for XFS as root file system type for CBL-Mariner, which is Microsoft’s Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge appliances.

The change was introduced with the latest version 2.0.20230426 for CBL-Mariner where the changelog notes “Adding XFS as a root filesystem type”. Over on the pull requests section of the GitHub page, developer AZaugg has provided a summary of the change (via Phoronix):

Summary

Adding XFS support to the installer, as well as allow Mariner to boot XFS filesystems.

Change Log

• Added XFS option to Mariner Installer
• Added fsck.xfs to initrd
• Added XFS module to grub

Does this affect the toolchain?

YES

Test Methodology

• Build a new VHD and booted, confirmed root filesystem was running XFS

On that note, other file systems on Linux are also getting performance improvements and optimizations. These include F2FS, Btrfs, and EXT4. Besides these, the Linux implementation of Microsoft’s NTFS file system (NTFS3) is also set to receive optimizations.

Here is the full changelog for CBL-Mariner version 2.0.20230426 if anyone is wondering:

• Add kata-containers-cc package
• Adding XFS as a root filesystem type
• Enable serial console for ISO installer
• Fix CVE 2022 37601 on webpack loader-utils integrated with webpack
• Fix CVE-2021-45985 on memcached and ntopng
• Fix uninstallation of InfluxDB package
• Patch CVE-2021-28235 for etcd packages
• Patch CVE-2022-2989 in podman
• Patch CVE-2022-3165 in qemu
• Patch CVE-2023-25173 and CVE-2023-25153 for k3s
• Patch embedded zlib package within boost to fix CVE 2018-25032
• Upgrade bundled njs version in nginx to 0.7.12 to fix CVE-2020-19692, CVE-2020-19695
• Upgrade bundled njs version in nginx to 0.7.12 to fix CVE-2020-19692, CVE-2020-19695
• Upgrade k3s to 1.25.8 and 1.26.3
• Upgrade k3s to v1.24.6 & add v1.25.5
• Upgrade libyang to 2.1.55 to fix CVE-2023-26916
• Upgrade moby-cli to 20.10.24
• Upgrade moby-runc to 1.1.5 to fix CVE-2023-28642, CVE-2023-27561, CVE-2023-25809
• Upgrade mysql to 8.0.33 address CVE-2023-21976, CVE-2023-21972, CVE-2023-21982, CVE-2023-21977, CVE-2023-21980
• Upgrade nmap to version 7.93 to fix CVE-2018-25032
• Upgrade tcl to 8.6.13 Fix CVE-2018-25032
• Upgrade protobuf-c to 1.4.1 to fix CVE-2022-48468 –
• Kernel upgrade to version 5.15.107.1
• Add nodejs18.spec to support nodejs 18
• clang-16 and llvm-16: add new SPECS
• openssl: patch CVE-2023-0465 and CVE-2023-0466

You may find more details on its GitHub repository.

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