On 12/9/2009 12:23 PM, Miguel Di Ciurcio Filho wrote: > Miguel Medalha wrote: >> I am about to install a new server running CentOS 5.4. The server will >> contain pretty critical data that we can't afford to corrupt. >> > > Just for the record, Theodore Ts'o marked ext4 as stable and ready for > general usage more than one year ago [1]. On 25 December 2008 kernel > 2.6.28 was released with ext4 considered ready for production. So, ext4 > is not _that_ new anymore. One year latter that Fedora 12 and Ubuntu > 9.10 began using ext4 as default. > > I believe for 5.5 or even on 5.6, ext4 will not be a tech preview > anymore. Considering that RH has extended the support so much, and how > ext3 is so limited with the current and future disk's capacities (fsck > on a 1TB volume is not funny). The current ext4 module is close to the > one on 2.6.29 plus lots of fixes [2] > > [1] > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=03010a3350301baac2154fa66de925ae2981b7e3 > [2] rpm -q --changelog kernel|grep ext4 My leaning is that 5.4 would be a bit too soon for production data, unless you have a very specific need and very good backups. But it's darned close to ready. Waiting until 5.5 or 5.6 (or 6.0) or at least waiting until next spring sounds like a reasonable middle ground. That gives the Ubuntu and FC hordes time to beat on it in less controlled settings.