There was a similar thread about which is the best FS for Centos. I'm using ext3, and wondered if XFS would be more 'data safe' than ext3. I had a 100GiB ext3 partition, and it took up 1.75GiB for FS administration purposes. I reformatted it to XFS, and it only used 50.8MB! I now have a fresh new drive to install my root Centos system onto, and wondered about creating the partitions as XFS? What about the XFS admin tools - do these get installed when you format a partition as XFS from anaconda, or are they a seperate rpm package, installed later? Kind Regards, Keith Roberts -- In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they are not. This email was sent from my laptop with Centos 5.5
On Friday 03 December 2010 13:55:28 Keith Roberts wrote:> There was a similar thread about which is the best FS for > Centos. > > I'm using ext3, and wondered if XFS would be more 'data > safe' than ext3.'data safe' is certainly not something easy to define. Short answer: no XFS is not better than ext3 here. Longer answer: Both are journaled, ext3 typically pushes data to disk quicker, neither are check-summed, ext3 is more widely used, neither does replication, XFS has some corner cases (I have seen strangeness with very full filesystems and also it's not recommended for 32- bit CentOS). In the end the only thing that'll keep your data safe are backups.> I had a 100GiB ext3 partition, and it took up 1.75GiB for FS > administration purposes. I reformatted it to XFS, and it > only used 50.8MB!Oversimplified: XFS sets data structures up as you go, ext3 does it from start. Also, the default for ext3 is to reserve space (see the -m option).> I now have a fresh new drive to install my root Centos > system onto, and wondered about creating the partitions > as XFS?ext3 is default => extremely well tested => good choice (IMHO)> What about the XFS admin tools - do these get installed when > you format a partition as XFS from anaconda, or are they a > seperate rpm package, installed later?They are in a separate rpm (xfsprogs, repository: extras). /Peter -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20101203/46ab9236/attachment-0002.sig>
Am 03.12.2010 13:55, schrieb Keith Roberts:> There was a similar thread about which is the best FS for > Centos. > > I'm using ext3, and wondered if XFS would be more 'data > safe' than ext3. > > I had a 100GiB ext3 partition, and it took up 1.75GiB for FS > administration purposes. I reformatted it to XFS, and it > only used 50.8MB!Just yesterday we had the case of hitting ext3 limits - a folder can only contain 32k subfolders. So I had to create a XFS container, to hold the amount of data. Rainer
On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 14:20 +0100, Peter Kjellstr?m wrote:> On Friday 03 December 2010 13:55:28 Keith Roberts wrote: > > There was a similar thread about which is the best FS for > > Centos. > > I'm using ext3, and wondered if XFS would be more 'data > > safe' than ext3. > 'data safe' is certainly not something easy to define.+1> Short answer: no XFS is not better than ext3 here.+1 We'll all move to ext4 with CentOS 6. ext4 is a big improvement over the options available in CentOS 5> In the end the only thing that'll keep your data safe are backups. > > I had a 100GiB ext3 partition, and it took up 1.75GiB for FS > > administration purposes. I reformatted it to XFS, and it > > only used 50.8MB! > Oversimplified: XFS sets data structures up as you go, ext3 does it from > start. Also, the default for ext3 is to reserve space (see the -m option).+1 Although equivalent issues can arise in XFS [vs. ext3]. <http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com/2010/09/xfs-inodes.html>> > I now have a fresh new drive to install my root Centos > > system onto, and wondered about creating the partitions > > as XFS? > ext3 is default => extremely well tested => good choice (IMHO)I'd stick with ext3 unless you have a compelling reason to use another FS.> > What about the XFS admin tools - do these get installed when > > you format a partition as XFS from anaconda, or are they a > > seperate rpm package, installed later? > They are in a separate rpm (xfsprogs, repository: extras).
2010/12/3 Peter Kjellstr?m <cap at nsc.liu.se>:>> What about the XFS admin tools - do these get installed when >> you format a partition as XFS from anaconda, or are they a >> seperate rpm package, installed later? > > They are in a separate rpm (xfsprogs, repository: extras).There is a good chance that they are included in the distro as of CentOS 6 [1] and, therefore, are available during the installation. This remains to be seen/tested though. Akemi [1] http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=4649
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 7:55 AM, Keith Roberts <keith at karsites.net> wrote:> There was a similar thread about which is the best FS for > Centos. > > I'm using ext3, and wondered if XFS would be more 'data > safe' than ext3.If your work load doesn't dictate the use of XFS, I would personally stick with EXT3. It's the default file system on thousands and thousands of machines, so I would be willing to bet that the widespread deployment of EXT3 would flush out show stopping bugs rather quickly. There was a thread discussing this on the LKML a while back. You might try searching there to get feedback from the folks who actually write the file systems. - Ryan -- http://prefetch.net
On 12/3/2010 6:20 AM, Peter Kjellstr?m wrote:>> What about the XFS admin tools - do these get installed when >> you format a partition as XFS from anaconda, or are they a >> seperate rpm package, installed later? > > They are in a separate rpm (xfsprogs, repository: extras).On that topic, there are many arbitrary differences between the way the ext3 and XFS tools work. If you're the sort who has half the tune2fs command line interface memorized, you'll find yourself climbing a bit of a learning curve by switching to XFS. IMHO, the best reason to use XFS is when you have to get past one of the ext3 limits. If your problem fits within ext3's limits, stick with it.