The SystemV file-system that implements Xenix FS, SystemV/386 FS, and Coherent FS is set to be removed from the Linux kernel. The SystemV file-system was [1]orphaned back in 2023 while now is set to be removed entirely after developers realized the code was fundamentally broken.

Jan Kara of SUSE authored the patch to remove the 3.4k lines of code making up the SystemV "SysV" file-system.

Kara's rationale in [2]the commit was that it's not used as bugged code existed within it for two decades during the Big Kernel Lock "BKL" days:

"Since 2002 (change "Replace BKL for chain locking with sysvfs-private rwlock") the sysv filesystem was doing IO under a rwlock in its get_block() function (yes, a non-sleepable lock hold over a function used to read inode metadata for all reads and writes). Nobody noticed until syzbot in 2023. This shows nobody is using the filesystem. Just drop it."

So with [3]this VFS Git branch slated for the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window, the SystemV file-system is being removed.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-SysV-File-System-Orphan

[2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs.git/commit/?h=vfs-6.15.sysv&id=448fa70158f9b348e71869cfe4a31988e07b20b2

[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vfs/vfs.git/log/?h=vfs-6.15.sysv