Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boot File System

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. In the sense that there's no consensus about whether to merge somewhere or to keep separate, but there's clearly consensus not to delete this.  Sandstein  09:43, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Boot File System

Boot File System (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I'm not convinced that this single operating system feature meets WP:GNG. I can't find sources for it either, outside the homepages of the few enthusiasts that wrote Linux drivers to it. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 20:20, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

• Honestly I don't care, I'm only interested in the Be File System, so as long as BFS is kept disambiguated… --Mmu man (talk) 21:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
• Redirect to List of file systems or delete. I only see trivial mentions scattered throughout reliable sources (example). I prefer a redirect over deletion so that readers can still find information about where it's used and supported. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 08:13, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:32, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

• keep This is very minor. It's spectacularly uninteresting. But it has also been a part of System V Unix for 30 years, and that's a big piece of computing development and history. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:07, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

  Why not merge it with UNIX System V or whatever is most relevant then? More than a stand-alone filesystem, it sounds like it's a part of the core OS that comes in the trick form of a filesystem. LjL (talk) 12:54, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

It's more a filesystem than it is an OS. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:20, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

That's a joke, right? Of course it's a filesystem, what I'm saying is that it's part of an OS and for other OS's the same kind of part wouldn't typically be implemented as a filesystem. At any rate, if you prefer this non-notable article to be deleted instead of merged with the relevant article...

If was a joke it would have had "Bazinga" after it.

Merging it to System V would improve neither coverage of this topic, not coverage of System V. Especially so as that's a huge scope to try and fit into an article and so space there really is precious (this is unusual at WP). Space for this article is plentiful, and the topic is basically notable (albeit a minority interest). So we should keep it, and keep it separate. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:28, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh well, then if it's notable, we'll surely see secondary sources coming for it and the issue will become moot. LjL (talk) 13:30, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Let me also add that being "part" of something "big" for many years doesn't by itself make something notable, otherwise we could legitimately have separate articles about single source code lines of Unix. We don't and we shouldn't. So your argument for keeping, whether or not there are other ones, is invalid. LjL (talk) 13:35, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 22:55, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

• comment Several unix-like distros support this filesystem. The SCO/UnixWare helpdocs.[1][2] Linux support is WP:NOTEWORTHY in the wiki-reliable sources, specifically noted for heavy use of the big kernel lock deprecated feature.[3][4] Linux helpdocs.[5][6] NetBSD conference-paper on filesystems work which tested a new infrastructure by porting SysVBFS,[7] itself supported since NetBSD4.[8] Not every Unix-like distro still retains BFS compatibility: Solaris-fka-SunOS dropped support.[9][10] The 1993 infoworld piece, located by User:NinjaRobotPirate, has the most depth in the WP:SOURCES, roughly two sentences: "BFS (Boot File System) supports filesystem-independent booting." Also, we learn from the block-diagram-picture,[11] that BFS in UnixWare is implemented on top of the SVR4.2-style pseudo-SCSI device subsystem, and is made visible to usermode via the SVR4.0 virtual filesystem abstraction layer.

  Fundamentally, this is going to be a WP:PERMASTUB article, if bangkept, simply because the filesystem is so trivial to implement: it supports only a single directory, with purely-contiguous non-special 16-bit-inode files, max-14-char filenames, plus in some variants only a single inode can be open for write-access at any point in time, and so on. It is purposely stripped to the bare essentials, because it is a "boot-time-only kernel-images-only filesystem" utilized only for a very special purpose, very early in the boot-process, and afterwards, effectively disappears from the OS. Like the master boot record of MSDOS, the concept of BFS is a tiny and almost 'trivial' yet important piece of computer science. The closest we have to a parent-article is at Booting#Integrated_circuit_read-only_memory_era, which briefly mentions that "Unix workstations originally had vendor-specific ROM-based firmware." BFS is a quasi-standardized subset of several of those bootloader-firmwares, methinks. Because the BFS is used across several distros (in various different decades), it does not make much sense to up-merge the WP:PRESERVE material into any specific parent-OS-article, whether UNIX System V or UnixWare or NetBSD or the dedicated Linux startup process article. For different reasons, up-merge into a filesystem-related article seems incorrect, since BFS only qualifies as a 'filesystem' of the most rudimentary possible description, by its very nature.

  If bangkeep is not in the cards, I would say that adding a new paragraph into the Booting article probably makes the most sense. The justification for bangkeep, if it can be made, would have to rely on WP:DEADLINE... as the 1993 infoworld piece hints, the existence of in-depth sources will most likely require searching the *offline* material from the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, besides the plausible existence of not-yet-found offline sources, there is another aspect that might cause one to lean towards bangkeep: because it is such a trivial filesystem, and to a lesser extent because it is a kind of conceptual glue between the bootloader-firmware and the earliest stages of operation the OS kernel undergoes, BFS has some educational value to the readership. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an EECS reference for computer science students, of course, but there might just be room in WP:NOTPAPER to cover the concept of the purposely-simplistic-bootloader-specific-filesystem, which BFS embodies. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 05:27, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

• keep I'm not an expert, but quickly glancing at the notability page, the secondary source requirement doesn't apply to the content strictly, it applies to the subject, there has to be significant interest in the subject over the years. A quick google and I'm seeing the sysV bootfs mentioned in a lot of places, including a netbsd academic paper about RUMP, and a microsoft research paper about their helios research operating system, although the microsoft paper wasn't accessible when I tried to see how bfs was mentioned in it. It's getting mentioned with some frequency in published academic papers. What more could you possibly ask for?TeeTylerToe (talk) 07:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

• @TeeTylerToe: Could you point to specific sources? I presume that by the Helios paper you mean this one, which discusses Helios's own boot fs somewhere, not the SysV boot fs that this article is about. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 12:33, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

As I said, I couldn't access the paper when I was doing the search. The google return was based on System V shared memory, so you're right, that was a false hit. It is mentioned in "Rump File Systems: Kernel Code Reborn" by Antti Kantee, a paper for Helsinki university and in "Kernel Development in Userspace - The Rump Approach" by the same person for the same university. It is technically notable. The best kind of notable. Also "Unix System V Release 4: System Administrator's Guide, Volume 1" Prentice-Hall, 1990, ISBN 0139470867, 9780139470868 Plus a laundry list of SysV unix books.TeeTylerToe (talk) 19:11, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein  10:49, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect to Unixware, which is what the article itself claims it's part of, while making no assertion about BFS's notability or importance as a stand-alone software product. This is a relatively tiny mechanism that works as part of an operating system, and which just happens to be implemented in the form of a filesystem; things like this don't each need to have their separate article, and the way they are implemented should not change that. LjL (talk) 13:40, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. LjL (talk) 15:16, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• Keep - admittedly a relatively minor tidbit of computing history, but I learnt something from this article, and I'm happy that I learnt it, and I'd be sad to see it deleted. I don't think merging into Unixware is a good idea, because it won't fit well with filesystem lists/categories/templates. SJK (talk) 22:18, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually if it were made into a section at UnixWare, say UnixWare#Boot File System, then categories and templates could just link to the latter. LjL (talk) 22:54, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

How do you add a section of an article to a category? Either the whole article is part of the category, or it isn't. And seeing UnixWare in the file systems category, people will remove it (on the correct grounds that Unixware is not a filesystem), with the end result that this filesystem will be missing from the category. Templates can indeed link to sections of articles, but my past experience is intra-article links often get broken unintentionally by people reorganising the article. So, on the whole, I think leaving this as a separate article will produce the superior outcome from a template and category perspective. SJK (talk) 07:26, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

You're right about categories, I was really thinking of just lists and templates. LjL (talk) 14:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.