Re: [tlug] Linux Filesystems Comparison Article

["Patrick Niessen" <tlug.niessen@example.com>]

On 4/28/06, Edward Middleton <edward@example.com> wrote:

> >>
> > To be honest I am not sure why they made this recommendation.  From my
> > experience of hosting 15 Users Data with Samba on XFS I never had a
> > problem with such data loss.
>
> How often do you cut the power to this server while it is in the middle
> of writing lots of data to disk.
>

I am sure everyone can agree its NOT good to cut power from a system
that performs a lot of writing to disk.  We use UPS but - ahem -
sometimes a powerswitch in the rack got mistakenly pressed...  So far
the server always survived.

> > If XFS was so risky by default then that would mean that all SGI
> > workstations are unstable.
> >
>
> The statement simply says XFS are more sensitive then other filesystems
> to power failure which in a default configuration is accurate.

It looks more like a strong discouragement now.  In the early days of
gentoo XFS was always recommended on the gentoo site and was part of
the gentoo kernel.

> > Of course you can also change the settings to change the caching
> > behaviour of xfs.
>
> Which will adversely effect the performance of the filesystem, which is
> one of the major reasons why people use XFS.
>

I am not a baby sitter.  If someone installs a system they either take
the default configuration not bothering to know the nitty gritty, or
they make a conscious decision for x and y with parameters z.  Its up
to each person to decide for himself the positives and negatives and
his own priorities. Since know one can claim ownership of the absolute
truth, I can merely provide anecdotal evidence of what worked for me.

The average linux user will never notice a difference in the file
systems whether XFS or EXT3 or reiser.  I tried them all for various
tasks and didn't notice a difference.  If shit happens, most users
will notice something no matter which FS.  I chose XFS for the reasons
indicated earlier namely ACL support and the backup tool. At the time,
Extended attribute patch enabled ACLs for other FSs but it was
difficult to estimate how well adopted and stable this patch was.  XFS
had native support of EAs/ACLs and was the most matured journaling
file system then.

On a final note, it should be pointed out that not all mount points
are used for frequent read writes.  A good scenario for a home user is
for instance a collection of divx movies on a linux box with a large
drive.  XFS performs well on large files, and after you uploaded a
movie once, you would only read from it to play back so the caching
would benefit you while your data is  in no danger.  If you are
paranoid about caching you can either use the same file system with
caching switched off, or use a so called safer file system, for
partitions that have high i/o use.

--
Patrick Niessen