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Author Topic: What filesystem should I use?  (Read 2779 times)

Archmage

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What filesystem should I use?
« on: January 21, 2007, 09:51:02 PM »
I'm just wondering what filesystem should I use.

At the moment I'm using ext3, but it seems to be a little slow when delete files. What filesystem should I use? xfs, jfs? Any other one that is recommended?
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wuischke

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2007, 01:36:13 AM »
I personally would recommend you to stick with ext3.
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Kry

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2007, 02:41:21 AM »
I use xfs.
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skolnick

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2007, 09:32:24 PM »
I have used ext3 and reiserfs, both seem to work fine, although reiserfs is a bit faster IMHO, but I sticked to ext3 since there is a program that can read/write ext3 from windows ;) and that is useful sometimes.
@Kry: what advantages does xfs offer over the other filesystems for amule users?

Regards.
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Archmage

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #4 on: January 24, 2007, 07:18:00 AM »
As far as I found out ext3 and jfs are slower but more secure, while xfs is faster but if your power fails there wont be anything written on the harddrive, therefore you'll lose some parts.

But since amule will simply redownload missing parts I think xfs will suit me the best.
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bootstrap

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #5 on: January 24, 2007, 02:36:43 PM »
I would also recommend to stay with ext3.
You could probably gain performance by using the dir_index  option (read man tune2fs) and changing to "writeback" instead of the default "ordered" data mode, but you should read about it, because doing so will result not only in higher performance, but also in a higher risk of data loss if something goes wrong (somehow similar to reiserfs).
There are a lot of discussions going on for quite some time but still, there's no perfect answer. The decision depends on a lot of different things and can't be made by a few lines in a forum.

Reasons against reiserfs, xfs, jfs:
(Please note, that these are my personal reasons to stick to ext3. You may decide to choose them anyway and you might be right with that. All of them are good and reliable filesystems.)
reiserfs is a fast and reliable filesystem, but when it comes to system crashes/failures you can experience painful days of sorting good and bad data. Quite often you will find a lot of files that don't contain the data you expect...
xfs is fast, stable and scales well on good (and expensive) hardware - even if it has the tendency to eat more ram than any other fs i've tested by now. If you can afford to buy a large scsi/sata raid and some uninteruptable powersupply, you might get one of the best filesystems you can imagine. If you just want to keep some files on a few ide disks in a common pc/server you might want to keep backups, because xfs generelly doesn't like to get shut down without warning and you might loose some more data. Reason here seems to be that xfs likes to keep a lot more data in your systems ram than most other fs do and only tends to write out data if it has to (configurable.... so take a look and decide yourself).
jfs another fast and solid filesystem, but somewhat uncommon and therefor not so much experienced users around that can help you if something goes wrong. I never tried it myself, but i sure will - when i get around to it :)

So now my reasons for ext3:well known, reliable, proven in many ways, fast(depends on your config) and probably the best supported fs on the market. Let's see how ext4 will evolve, but i see no reason to change from ext3 to any other fs by now.

Cheers,
boot
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wuischke

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #6 on: January 24, 2007, 08:21:39 PM »
A link regarding this topic: http://fsbench.netnation.com/

I'm waiting for ZFS for Linux (the GPL/CDDL dual license for OpenSolaris), which seems to be a very nice file system. :)
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phoenix

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2007, 01:17:25 AM »
Hi bootstrap! Long time no see! :)

I use ext3, and have used reiserfs for a long time. Longer than I should. I agree with bootstrap, I would stick to ext3 for the number of hours of prooven test. An I can tell you it does recover nice from a crash in ordered mode. As for reiserfs, my experience was not so good. But I have not managed to test reiserfs 4.

The fact is that I do not run a mission specific server here, so my priority is: when the light goes down, and goes up again, will I still have my data? I might be the hell of a lucky guy, but I have not had a single problem with ext3, and I had lots of power failures where I work. Even Novell file system was not that robust.
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skolnick

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Re: What filesystem should I use?
« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2007, 03:39:48 AM »
Thanks a lot for your explanations/points of view guys! very informative :)

@wuischke: Don't wait for ZFS to get to linux, simply go to http://www.sun.com and download solaris 10 (or the latest nevada build) you'll not regret it. ;)

Regards.
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