Amiga Fast File System Return to the Linux Kernel

When I say “Return” what I mean is, return to a fully functional state.

I fancy myself a vintage computer enthusiast, although I haven’t done a whole lot with my Amigas as of late, a part of that has been my apprehension in being able to access the data on my old drives. I also realize that ALL my Amigas need to be recapped in order to function correctly. This series of projects will begin in the near future as I have received new pressures to make it so. One Max Staudt authored a patch that was reviewed and committed by David Sterba, a SUSE developer and kernel maintainer that have removed all my excuses.

Max Staudt has noted that “The basic permission bits (protection bits in AmigaOS) have been broken in Linux AFFS. It would only set bits, but never delete them. Also, contrary to the documentation, the Archived bit was not handled.” My guess is, reading and archiving any AFFS drives was not an issue but manipulating the data from Linux was an issue. “Let’s fix this for good, and set the bits such that Linux and classic AmigaOS can coexist in the most peaceful manner,” he added. Torvalds appears to have agreed as Staudt’s code has made it into rc4 of version 5.9 of the Linux kernel. That is slated to be released to the masses in October 2020.

I am excited about the upcoming improved interaction between my current love of Linux and my historic love of Amiga in what I think is a huge kernel improvement. I don’t know how many people it will truly affect but the fact that Linus Torvalds agreed to include it in rc4 means it can’t just be an isolated edge case. As much as I would like to think that Mr. Staudt, Mr. Sterba, and Mr. Trovalds and are doing this just for me, I know that I am not alone in the love for this old technology.

I will be interested in seeing how this works out. I am hoping that I will be able to use the Amiga Fast File systems natively on Linux like any other file system. This should most certainly be fun. I am also happy to see that an Amiga enthusiast, a developer of SUSE and the top-dog of the Linux Kernel made effort to bring a needed enhancement to the Linux Kernel. It makes me wonder, are there other Amiga fans roaming the halls of SUSE? What kind of Amiga Computers does Max Staudt have? Has Linus Torvalds ever run Linux on an Amiga? It sure would be interesting to know!

Final Thoughts

I am super excited to see that Classic Amiga lives on, in part, within the Linux Kernel. This spectacular news is telling me that it is time to revisit with a lot more emphasis all the fun and excitement that the Amiga brought to me. There is much to do on my Amigas, data to archive and capacitors to replace. This David Sterba from SUSE has taken action to make Linux and Amiga interoperability much better and bridges a 25 year technology gap that helps to bring my 1990s platform of choice do the present.

Thank you, Max Staudt, David Sterba and all those involved on the Kernel team, so much, for what I consider to be the best Linux kernel submissions of 2020. This brings to me a smile that crosses from ear-to-ear to my face and now presses me hard to do more with my Amiga computers.

References

AFFS Patch https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/8/27/990
TheRegister.com Article Linux 5.9 rc4
Amiga Fast File System Tag for 5.9
Linux Kernel Mailing List announcement