[CentOS] XFS or EXT3 ?

Fri Dec 3 14:25:31 UTC 2010
cpolish at surewest.net <cpolish at surewest.net>

On Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 08:31:12AM -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 14:20 +0100, Peter Kjellström 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).

Has anyone an update or status for issues raised in 
   http://lwn.net/Articles/322823/
or T'so's response to the issue
   https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/45
have all the apps been adjusted, or is ext4 still more vulnerable
to data loss than ext3? Could link to a reference?

-- 
Charles Polisher