aufs - please support Mr. Okajima
Aufs filesystem is a full-featured, full-fledged layered filesystem for Linux, created by Mr. Junjiro Okajima. It is an alternative to "unionfs", Unlike unionfs, however, aufs is actively developed, and actively supported. Unlike other alternative Linux layered filesystems like "overlayfs", aufs is feature rich and has a lot of options. Aufs is mature and stable software, it is about 10 years old by now.I don't know how extensive aufs is used in the field, but I have a suspicion that many "live" OS systems (with support for persistence) will use aufs in form or another. I also think that aufs would be widely deployed in the embedded world, where one needs to have "writable" rootfs while still having the base OS in ROM. What I *do* know is that aufs is used in Fatdog64, FatdogArm, Puppy Linux and its multiplicity of derivatives, Slax, AntiX, and perhaps many others.
I recently had the pleasure of working directly Mr. Okajima.
I had problems with kernel oops with FatdogArm on cubox-i. Researching the problems, I found that kernel oops was a known common problem in the official cubox-i kernel and there were some solutions - but they didn't seem to work for me. My oops symptoms were quite different, too - the kernel didn't immediately crashed; but all filesystem operation failed, which lead me to suspect that the problem may have had to do with aufs (the other popularly Linux distros on cubox-i - Arch, Ubuntu - they all don't use aufs as far as I'm aware).
I escalated the problem to Mr. Okajima through the public mailing list and to my pleasant surprise, found that he was all courtesy, and very responsive. Mr. Okajima is very knowledgeable person - not only he helped me to troubleshoot the problem, but he actually solved it. This is despite the fact this was his first time looking at problems in ARM systems (and the problem required looking at ARM code dissasembly to find the cause); and the fact that he didn't have any ARM boxes whatsoever to reproduce the problem. One rarely encounters this kind of support and talent - even in the commercial world.
I'd encourage those who beneftis from aufs - especially commercially - to support the work of Mr. Okajima in whatever means that they can. Donation link is here (this goes straight to Mr. Okajima - not to me).
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