[ale] XFS on Linux - Is it ready for prime time?

Jeff Hubbs jhubbslist at att.net
Thu Apr 22 08:33:26 EDT 2010


I've been using ext4 on both the "big/slow" SATA array and the 
"small/fast" SAS array in the file server I run at work for the better 
part of a year now.  I performed unspeakable tortures on it before I put 
the system into production but even the automated disk-to-disk backup 
that takes place every night (especially the first-of-the-month one that 
makes a >400GiB squashfs image) as well as the occasional ClamAV scans 
and searches definitely load things up.  To date the only problem that I 
have had with the server at all was probably attributable to either 
Samba or a stray bit flip affecting Samba, not ext4, and it was cured 
with a Samba restart.  In fact, I had occasion to bring the eight-drive 
RAID1+0 SATA array down recently after 208 days of continuous uptime and 
gave it a fscking before mounting it, and it was fine.  That being said, 
I'm not seeing a downside to ext4, at least not yet.  Granted, perhaps 
there are applications where XFS, JFS, etc. would work so much better 
that it would be worth occasional strangenesses, but a big file server 
for mostly WinTel desktop/laptop clients isn't one of them.

On 4/22/10 7:59 AM, Warren Myers wrote:
> According to Red Hat's press release yesterday, I'd say if you had had 
> any concerns, they should be gone now : 
> http://press.redhat.com/2010/04/21/red-hat-enterprise-linux-6-beta-available-today-for-public-download/
>
> XFS ad EXT4 coming with RHEL6 by default.
>
> WMM
>
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 21:34, Doug McNash <dmcnash at charter.net 
> <mailto:dmcnash at charter.net>> wrote:
>
>
>     I'm consulting at a company that wants to turn their Linux based
>     NAS in to a reliable product.  They initially chose XFS because
>     they were under the impression that it was high performance but
>     what they got was something of questionable reliability. I have
>     identified and patched several serious bugs (2.6.29) and I have a
>     feeling there are more unidentified ones out there. Furthermore,
>     xfs_check craps out of memory every time so we have to do an
>     xfs_repair at boot and it takes forever.  But today we got into a
>     situation where xfs_repair can't repair the disk (a raid5 array btw).
>
>     Does anyone out there use xfs? How about a suggestion for a stable
>     replacement.
>     --
>     doug mcnash
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>
> -- 
> Warren Myers
> http://warrenmyers.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/warrenmyers
>
>
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