Sorin Srbu wrote: > Vandaman <> scribbled on Thursday, November 20, 2008 5:31 PM: > >>> And I am sure there >>> are usecase's where Jfs is a better option than Xfs. >>> >>> Does this help answer the question ? > > So which fs is preferred when, any rule of thumb one should know of? Pointers > gratefully accepted. > There's never a single really good answer for your type of question. You need to assess *your* needs against the various file systems available. I don't know how up-to-date this is kept, but it seems to be a good place to start off by comparing features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems Performance - you should be able to find something more current, but I believe the basic trends are still true: http://fsbench.netnation.com/ Just repeating what's already been said - ext3 is the default on Centos. xfs support is contributor added. Support for other file systems seems to drop off quickly - you may be able to get there, but it will take more work on your part - which may also affect how updates are handled - especially kernel updates. Personally, in years past, I've toyed with xfs, jfs and reiserfs3. xfs & reiserfs always felt twitchy to me. I liked jfs, but stayed with ext3 for production. Couldn't shrink jfs, if I recall correctly, which was important to me. I've never been burned by ext3. It's there - it works. I've never had a real need for anything beyond ext3's capabilities. Normal precautions like backups, UPS, etc. go a long way to ensure piece of mind. Also, if it turns out ext4 is the cat's meow, I expect there to be a trivial upgrade from ext3. -- tkb