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RageX^NZ
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Joined: 26 May 2003
Posts: 58
Location: Mount Maunganui, NEW ZEALAND
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 Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject: New File System XFS or ext4 ? |
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OK, for about 4 years all of my file systems have been ReiserFS. I have never had a single problem with it. However recently I have notice a trend that people are moving away from ReiserFS. Even Fortinet have moved their appliances to ext3!
I am about to rebuild my whole system and want to move away from Reiser.
If you were doing the same, what would you move to ?
From what I can see, XFS is more mature than ext4 but has had one case of data corruption recently, it also does not perform directory creation/deletion as easily as ext4.
I mainly have large files e.g. 350mb - 2gb |
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HeissFuss
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Joined: 11 Jan 2005
Posts: 414
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| Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Don't forget JFS. I probably wouldn't run it as my root FS but I use it for storage. |
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santaclaws
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Jan 2007
Posts: 161
Location: Deeper Underground
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| Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 10:24 pm Post subject: Re: New File System XFS or ext4 ? |
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| RageX^NZ wrote: |
If you were doing the same, what would you move to ?
From what I can see, XFS is more mature than ext4 but has had one case of data corruption recently, it also does not perform directory creation/deletion as easily as ext4.
I mainly have large files e.g. 350mb - 2gb |
I would move to ext3 - but if you only maintain large files I think XFS would be a good choice! Ext4 is not stable yet so I would not take it.
Maybe a partition with XFS and the rest of your hdd with ext3?
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broken_chaos
Guru
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 370
Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I find XFS to be quite excellent overall, as a filesystem. The only thing I've found it's not good for is huge (hundreds of thousands) of small files, such as the portage tree/cache - it's noticeably slower on these. I've found it's speed and reliability quite good for normal sized files (~20 kilobytes and greater) and excellent for large files (several megabytes and above). ReiserFS (3.6) is still the best for hundreds of thousands of tiny files, but ext2/3 aren't bad for that either. |
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iphands
n00b
Joined: 01 Oct 2005
Posts: 61
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| Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:00 am Post subject: Re: New File System XFS or ext4 ? |
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| santaclaws wrote: |
I would move to ext3 - but if you only maintain large files I think XFS would be a good choice! Ext4 is not stable yet so I would not take it.
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| Code: | iphands@cbow24 ~ $ mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /usr/portage type ext4dev (rw,nosuid,nodev,extents) |
Notice the last line... I've run my portage tree like this for months now. Its pretty stable for me! Does anyone actually have experience with it failing?
I really really trust ext4. Next time I move my root it'll be ext4 for sure. +1 ext4 |
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zieloo
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Joined: 28 Mar 2004
Posts: 1337
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| Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 7:43 am Post subject: |
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| HeissFuss wrote: | | Don't forget JFS. I probably wouldn't run it as my root FS but I use it for storage. |
JFS is actually not the best choice.
I'd go for xfs for sure. The best performance among the other fs's yet still reliable and stable. Great tools.
Forget about ext4 right know. Even if it's in the kernel it's not suitable for production machines. |
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octoploid
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Joined: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 65
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| Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 9:44 am Post subject: |
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I moved my system from xfs to ext4 last week. It is amazing
how much speed you gain. Especially when you work with
many small files (maildir, kernel, portage) ext4 is orders of
magnitude faster. Ext4 is about as fast as xfs when handling
big files.
It also runs rock stable over here, and you can always go back
to ext3 if you don't use extens.
The only drawback is the lack of an equivalent of xfsdump &
xfsrestore as a backup solution. I use rsync now but it very slow
compared to xfsdump.
(I found these benchmarks useful)
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na641
Apprentice
Joined: 27 Jun 2002
Posts: 171
Location: Eugene, OR
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| octoploid wrote: | I moved my system from xfs to ext4 last week. It is amazing
how much speed you gain. Especially when you work with
many small files (maildir, kernel, portage) ext4 is orders of
magnitude faster. Ext4 is about as fast as xfs when handling
big files.
It also runs rock stable over here, and you can always go back
to ext3 if you don't use extens.
The only drawback is the lack of an equivalent of xfsdump &
xfsrestore as a backup solution. I use rsync now but it very slow
compared to xfsdump.
(I found these benchmarks useful) |
I was curious about ext4. do you know if the dir_index and journal_data options/optimizations from ext3 are still valid with ext4? |
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octoploid
n00b
Joined: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 65
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 6:43 am Post subject: |
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| na641 wrote: | | octoploid wrote: | I moved my system from xfs to ext4 last week. It is amazing
how much speed you gain. Especially when you work with
many small files (maildir, kernel, portage) ext4 is orders of
magnitude faster. Ext4 is about as fast as xfs when handling
big files.
It also runs rock stable over here, and you can always go back
to ext3 if you don't use extens.
The only drawback is the lack of an equivalent of xfsdump &
xfsrestore as a backup solution. I use rsync now but it very slow
compared to xfsdump.
(I found these benchmarks useful) |
I was curious about ext4. do you know if the dir_index and journal_data options/optimizations from ext3 are still valid with ext4? |
Yes they are.
Dir_index is used by default by e2fsprogs when you create a new filesystem.
I ran "tune2fs -O has_journal -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda" as this gives me the best performance.
(See the benchmark link I posted above)
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Enlight
Advocate
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 3519
Location: Alsace (France)
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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| My last test reported xfs to be really faster than ext4 messing with portage tree. But was usin a dedicated partition with a 1ko block size and many other tweaks. |
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broken_chaos
Guru
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 370
Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 6:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Enlight wrote: | | My last test reported xfs to be really faster than ext4 messing with portage tree. But was usin a dedicated partition with a 1ko block size and many other tweaks. |
Care to share the options that you used for creating the filesystem? They'd be handy for me, since I'm a big fan of XFS, but ran into problems trying to use it for the portage tree. Thanks. |
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davidgurvich
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Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 1063
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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| I've only had one problem with XFS. If your system requires a hard reboot there will be file corruption. The partition needs to be unmounted to xfs_repair. |
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tnt
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Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 8:05 am Post subject: |
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the link is not valid. any other comparation resource?
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Akkara
Bodhisattva
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 6702
Location: &akkara
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | any other comparation resource? |
I had done a quick study of various filesystems several months ago which perhaps you might find helpful.
It was in the context of what's best for portage, and I didn't look at ext4, but the method and code are all included in that post so you can re-create with whatever parameters you need (and then post back the results!  ) |
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Lupin_the_3rd
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Posts: 168
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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I've been using ext3 for / and xfs for /home for several years now. Very stable setup and xfs gives great performance manipulating large files.
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getchoo
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 38
Location: Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Personally, I'd stick with reiserfs a few years longer. Who cares if people are moving, it's a solid FS. |
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mudrii
l33t
Joined: 26 Jun 2003
Posts: 789
Location: Singapore
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zeek
Guru
Joined: 16 Nov 2002
Posts: 480
Location: Bantayan Island
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zeek
Guru
Joined: 16 Nov 2002
Posts: 480
Location: Bantayan Island
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| Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:06 am Post subject: |
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| getchoo wrote: | | Personally, I'd stick with reiserfs a few years longer. Who cares if people are moving, it's a solid FS. |
Actually there is a reason they're moving away from it. It doesn't scale and it has serious problems with SMP hardware as it uses the BKL (Big Kernel Lock) to protect certain sections of code. Long standing corruption bugs seem to be a lot easier to trigger on multi-cpu hardware too.
And it doesn't really classify as a solid FS either as its missing (quality) diagnostic and recovery tools. Its also missing maintenance tools like a defragger. |
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