[gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Jarry]

Hi,

I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
For me very important features are:

snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
journaling
resizeable (if possible online)

After a little research I have found two candidates:
JFS (created by IBM)
XFS (created by SGI)

Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
which of them could be better for my need?
More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
Or should I consider some different filesystem?

Jarry

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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Matthias Fechner]

Am 21.03.2011 20:32, schrieb Jarry:
> resizeable (if possible online)

I switched to ext4, it can resize in both direction.

Bye
Matthias

-- 

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to
produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." --
Rich Cook

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Stéphane Guedon]

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On Monday 21 March 2011 20:32:22 Jarry wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
> 
> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
> journaling
> resizeable (if possible online)
> 
> After a little research I have found two candidates:
> JFS (created by IBM)
> XFS (created by SGI)
> 
> Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
> which of them could be better for my need?
> More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
> Or should I consider some different filesystem?
> 
> Jarry

Someone said me reiser (version 3, still stable and maintained). Especially 
for small files like DB and portage tree.

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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Dale]

Jarry wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
>
> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
> journaling
> resizeable (if possible online)
>
> After a little research I have found two candidates:
> JFS (created by IBM)
> XFS (created by SGI)
>
> Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
> which of them could be better for my need?
> More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
> Or should I consider some different filesystem?
>
> Jarry
>

If you use XFS, make sure you have a UPS to prevent hard power offs.  I 
used XFS a good while back, every time the power would fail, it was 
toast.  I never did get it to rescue itself and ended up re-installing 
the OS.  It may have changed but that was my experience with XFS.  It 
was fast and nice but it likes normal shutdowns.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Thanasis]

on 03/21/2011 11:52 PM Dale wrote the following:
> <snip>
>
> If you use XFS, make sure you have a UPS to prevent hard power offs. 
> I used XFS a good while back, every time the power would fail, it was
> toast.
I second this. My experience with xfs: a good chance you will end up
with empty (zero size) files when the power fails (or maybe when it
comes back up?).
> I never did get it to rescue itself and ended up re-installing the OS.  
Same here.
> It may have changed 
I don't think so.
> but that was my experience with XFS.
yea ...The hard way...
> It was fast and nice 
Not fast on deletes. On the contrary, it was dead slow.
> but it likes normal shutdowns.
It won't survive otherwise...

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Michael Hampicke]

>> It was fast and nice 

> Not fast on deletes. On the contrary, it was dead slow.

That's about to change [1] - haven't tested it though

[1]
http://xfs.org/index.php/Improving_Metadata_Performance_By_Reducing_Journal_Overhead

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jarry wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
>> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
>> For me very important features are:
>>
>> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
>> journaling
>> resizeable (if possible online)
>>
>> After a little research I have found two candidates:
>> JFS (created by IBM)
>> XFS (created by SGI)
>>
>> Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
>> which of them could be better for my need?
>> More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
>> Or should I consider some different filesystem?
>>
>> Jarry
>>
>
> If you use XFS, make sure you have a UPS to prevent hard power offs.  I used
> XFS a good while back, every time the power would fail, it was toast.  I
> never did get it to rescue itself and ended up re-installing the OS.  It may
> have changed but that was my experience with XFS.  It was fast and nice but
> it likes normal shutdowns.

My anecdotal 2 cents:

For JFS, I used it on 2 systems and both were ruined by
crash/power-failure, journal replay failed, repair caused millions of
of JFS files to be renamed to inode number (or equally as useless
filenames). File contents of those were basically okay, but I had no
idea what they were or where they came from. Making an index of all
files in your system with full path and filename, filesize and hash
and storing it on another machine would help to match those files to
their original names in the event of a crash. This was about 5 years
ago so maybe JFS's crash recovery is more robust now, I don't know
because I have avoided it ever since.

I used XFS on a drive which had a bad cable and offlined itself in the
middle of an operation, it wouldn't mount and fsck didn't fix it,
which was scary, but using the xfs tools I was able to repair it
enough to mount read-only and copy all my files off to another disk,
then replaced the cable and reformatted the bad drive. So XFS got
positive marks for being recoverable, negative marks for failing to
recover itself. But in the end I was able to get my files in their
original names and locations, which was better than JFS. :)

Now for the past couple years I use ext4 everywhere and have suffered
dozens of crashes and power failures without incident (laptop with
dead battery and lack of power management, crazy nvidia-drivers
problems on desktop machine, UPS that died during a storm...).

For me, ext4 has been unbreakable so far. Fingers crossed. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Duong "Yang" Ha Nguyen]

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On Mon, 21 Mar 2011, Paul Hartman wrote:

> Now for the past couple years I use ext4 everywhere and have suffered
> dozens of crashes and power failures without incident (laptop with
> dead battery and lack of power management, crazy nvidia-drivers
> problems on desktop machine, UPS that died during a storm...).
>
> For me, ext4 has been unbreakable so far. Fingers crossed. :)
>

One more positive mark for ext4.  Toshiba laptops have the feature
which automatically turns themselves off to protect the hardware if
they suffer from overhead.  I've been using 2 Toshiba satellites with
Gentoo and countless power down incidents (especially when compiling
chromium or kdelibs), I use ext4 for all partitions and I've never had
a problem losing my data.

About the performance comparison, check out [1]Phoronix for more
details.

[1] http://phoronix.com

All the best,
Yang
-- 
Dương "Yang" Hà Nguyễn
Web log: http://cmpitg.wordpress.com/
"Life is a hack"

[ Do not send me M$ Office attachments, please.
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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Mr. Jarry]

Thanks for replies. As I had expected, they brought even more
uncertainty then I had before... :-)

ext3/4:
I excluded them because as I understand, they do not support
snapshots (only with lvm, which I do not use, and I've hreard
snapshots in lvm are not very effective, or something like that).
Next minus-point, I tried resizing of ext3/lvm once in the past
and remember it was a real pain in a**...

reiserfs/reiser4:
Future of these fs seems to be somehow vague, at least to me.
And I do not know if it can handle snaphosts and resizing.

xfs & power-off:
I have always thought, journaling is there to prevent data
loss during unexpected power-off. And now I read I could
loose data even with journaled fs...?

jfs & power-off:
the same. How is it possible, I could loose data with such
a mature journaled filesystem during power-off?

btrfs:
never heard of it. Is it stable enough to be used? I just
checkt man-page of "mount", and it does not show btrfs
as supported filesystem...

Jarry

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:13:48 +0100, Mr. Jarry wrote:

> ext3/4:
> I excluded them because as I understand, they do not support
> snapshots (only with lvm, which I do not use, and
>I've hreard
> snapshots in lvm are not very effective, or something like that).
> Next minus-point, I tried resizing of ext3/lvm once in the past
> and remember it was a real pain in a**...

Resizing LVM and ext3/4 is as easy as it gets

lvresize -L+5G /dev/vg/lv
resize2fs /dev/vg/lv

No need to mess around with cfdisk/fdisk/parted.

Also, letting LVM handle snapshots means you have a consistent way of
doing things, independent of the filesystem.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WinErr 103: Error buffer overflow - Too many errors encountered.
            Additional errors may not be displayed or recorded.

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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Dale]

Mr. Jarry wrote:
> Thanks for replies. As I had expected, they brought even more
> uncertainty then I had before... :-)
>
> ext3/4:
> I excluded them because as I understand, they do not support
> snapshots (only with lvm, which I do not use, and I've hreard
> snapshots in lvm are not very effective, or something like that).
> Next minus-point, I tried resizing of ext3/lvm once in the past
> and remember it was a real pain in a**...
>
> reiserfs/reiser4:
> Future of these fs seems to be somehow vague, at least to me.
> And I do not know if it can handle snaphosts and resizing.
>
> xfs&  power-off:
> I have always thought, journaling is there to prevent data
> loss during unexpected power-off. And now I read I could
> loose data even with journaled fs...?
>
> jfs&  power-off:
> the same. How is it possible, I could loose data with such
> a mature journaled filesystem during power-off?
>
> btrfs:
> never heard of it. Is it stable enough to be used? I just
> checkt man-page of "mount", and it does not show btrfs
> as supported filesystem...
>
> Jarry
>
>    

This is usually the case, more confusion.  Every file system has its 
strengths and its weaknesses.  Here is some info BTRFS:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Using_Btrfs_with_Multiple_Devices#Current_Status

This is what I suggest.  Find out which file systems support the 
snapshot, since that is one thing that you have to have and a lot of 
file systems don't support it.  Then research those to see which one 
matches your needs the closest.  Keep in mind, none of them will be 
perfect.  If you have large files, find out which one handles those 
best.  If you have a lot of small files, which one handles those best.  
You will always have some trade offs tho.  Example, XFS may be perfect 
but you may have to buy a really good UPS to work with your rig.  It may 
be that EXT4 works best but still lacks something with regard to speed.  
Just another trade off.  Just start with the must haves and work your 
way down the list until one file system is left.  That will likely be 
your file system.

I think the biggest thing, don't expect to find a file system that is 
perfect.  None of them are really.

Dale

:-)  :-)

[gentoo-user] Re: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 22/03/11, Dale wrote:

> This is usually the case, more confusion.  Every file system has its
> strengths and its weaknesses.  Here is some info BTRFS:
> 
> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Using_Btrfs_with_Multiple_Devices#Current_Status

There is no problem here. If you want RAID, you can just use the usual
raid driver of the kernel. This issue is a noop.

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 22.03.2011 09:13, schrieb Mr. Jarry:
> Thanks for replies. As I had expected, they brought even more
> uncertainty then I had before... :-)
> 
> ext3/4:
> I excluded them because as I understand, they do not support
> snapshots (only with lvm, which I do not use, and I've hreard
> snapshots in lvm are not very effective, or something like that).
> Next minus-point, I tried resizing of ext3/lvm once in the past
> and remember it was a real pain in a**...
> 

Neil already pointed out that resizing is plain easy. Increasing the
size online is a matter of seconds. Shrinking needs to be done offline
after an `e2fsck -f` but is no problem, either.

> reiserfs/reiser4:
> Future of these fs seems to be somehow vague, at least to me.
> And I do not know if it can handle snaphosts and resizing.
> 

Reiserfs-3 supports increasing the size but not shrinking (AFAIK).
Performance characteristics are similar to Ext3 in this regard.

> xfs & power-off:
> I have always thought, journaling is there to prevent data
> loss during unexpected power-off. And now I read I could
> loose data even with journaled fs...?
> 

Journalling is better suited for system crashes than power failures.
Things get especially ugly when you think about write caches in HDDs or
RAID controllers.

Additionally, the main purpose of journalling is to protect the file
system, not the data. Normally, journals only contain metadata changes
like space allocations to files but not the actual data written to it.
Even good old Ext3 might put random junk at the end of your files when
it is mounted with journal=writeback during a crash.

This is basically a speed/security tradeoff. When you read up about the
various journal options for Ext3, you will understand it better.

> jfs & power-off:
> the same. How is it possible, I could loose data with such
> a mature journaled filesystem during power-off?
> 
> btrfs:
> never heard of it. Is it stable enough to be used? I just
> checkt man-page of "mount", and it does not show btrfs
> as supported filesystem...
>

Wikipedia has information about it. Basically, it will be replacement of
Ext4.

Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:05:27 +0100, Florian Philipp wrote:

> > reiserfs/reiser4:
> > Future of these fs seems to be somehow vague, at least to me.
> > And I do not know if it can handle snaphosts and resizing.

> Reiserfs-3 supports increasing the size but not shrinking (AFAIK).
> Performance characteristics are similar to Ext3 in this regard.

Reiser3 does support shrinking, but not online. XFS doesn't support
shrinking under any circumstances.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[kashani]

On 3/22/2011 1:13 AM, Mr. Jarry wrote:
> Thanks for replies. As I had expected, they brought even more
> uncertainty then I had before... :-)
>
> ext3/4:
> I excluded them because as I understand, they do not support
> snapshots (only with lvm, which I do not use, and I've hreard
> snapshots in lvm are not very effective, or something like that).
> Next minus-point, I tried resizing of ext3/lvm once in the past
> and remember it was a real pain in a**...

	Any Mysql db smaller than 200GB is being backed up by a combination of 
LVM/Ext3 at a large Internet company with a big purple Y. It's mildly 
painful to setup, but RHEL uses LVM by default so it's just a matter of 
resizing to get the partitions you need. Once that's done you can kick 
off snapshots with very little effort.

	Not sure where you heard it was ineffective and I'd ignore further 
information from that source.

kashani

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Alan McKinnon]

On 22/03/11 19:22, kashani wrote:
> On 3/22/2011 1:13 AM, Mr. Jarry wrote:
>> Thanks for replies. As I had expected, they brought even more
>> uncertainty then I had before... :-)
>>
>> ext3/4:
>> I excluded them because as I understand, they do not support
>> snapshots (only with lvm, which I do not use, and I've hreard
>> snapshots in lvm are not very effective, or something like that).
>> Next minus-point, I tried resizing of ext3/lvm once in the past
>> and remember it was a real pain in a**...
> 
>     Any Mysql db smaller than 200GB is being backed up by a combination
> of LVM/Ext3 at a large Internet company with a big purple Y. It's mildly
> painful to setup, but RHEL uses LVM by default so it's just a matter of
> resizing to get the partitions you need. Once that's done you can kick
> off snapshots with very little effort.
> 
>     Not sure where you heard it was ineffective and I'd ignore further
> information from that source.

It goes like this:

Reduce:
- make fs smaller
- make volume smaller to match fs

Enlarge
- enlarge volume
- enlarge fs to match volume

Use snapshots
- find name of snapshot
- mount it somewhere

Oh look. Two commands in each case instead of magic hand waving. And you
have to think about what you are doing with reduce/enlarge because the
order is reversed. Yes, I can truly see why the OP found a comment on
them thar intartubes that the whole thing is broken and can't work. Yes,
I can really see that now.

But considering that the thread is all about "what is the best
filesystem?", that too is to be expected. The very title belies a lack
of understanding - the best filesystem for you is the one you have
tested and found best suits your needs.

Asking "what is the best filesystem?" without also supplying an array of
metrics and actual performance data is a mind-bogglingly stupid
question, along the lines of "what is the best girlfriend/wife/SO?"

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Stéphane Guedon]

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On Wednesday 23 March 2011 08:27:53 Alan McKinnon wrote:

> But considering that the thread is all about "what is the best
> filesystem?", that too is to be expected. The very title belies a lack
> of understanding - the best filesystem for you is the one you have
> tested and found best suits your needs.
> 
A filesystem looks like quite hard to test (as a kernel, as an hardware... much 
more complicated than a software you only need to install) : you need a 
specific machine to test on it. Which tests/operation to perform ?

Before launching tests, maybe asking advices to others to have their 
experiences would be a great idea !

But I would like really to know : can you give a way to test such things ? 
(hardware ... quite hard : need to buy before testing, kernel, FS).

Best regards

-- 
Stéphane Guedon
page web : http://www.22decembre.eu/
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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Wednesday 23 March 2011 08:50:14 Stéphane Guedon wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 March 2011 08:27:53 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > But considering that the thread is all about "what is the best
> > filesystem?", that too is to be expected. The very title belies a lack
> > of understanding - the best filesystem for you is the one you have
> > tested and found best suits your needs.
> 
> A filesystem looks like quite hard to test (as a kernel, as an hardware...
> much more complicated than a software you only need to install) : you need
> a specific machine to test on it. Which tests/operation to perform ?
> 
> Before launching tests, maybe asking advices to others to have their
> experiences would be a great idea !
> 
> But I would like really to know : can you give a way to test such things ?
> (hardware ... quite hard : need to buy before testing, kernel, FS).
> 
> Best regards

no, fs testing is easy. You know what the machine is going to do - so let it 
do it and measure the time it needs. Easy.

That way I found that reiser4+lzo is the best one *for me* and xfs the worst.

But I am sure a lot of people have scenarios where xfs is the best. Or ext4.

And if you don't care about barriers, jfs might be a good choice.

It depends on the stuff you want to do and what do you expect from a file 
system.

Btw, when doing a copy or move test to prime the fs - copy from the same type 
of filesystem or the numbers are skewed.

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Mr. Jarry]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:

> And if you don't care about barriers, jfs might be a good choice.

Knowing nothing about "barriers" I tried to find some info and
came accross this article:

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/Deciding-when-to-use-Linux-file-system-barriers

It says, barriers can not work with device mapper (raid, lvm).
If it is true (?) then because of having all partitions in raid1 (md),
I need not worry about barriers. Whatever filesystem I picked out,
I could not use barriers...

Jarry

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Wednesday 23 March 2011 14:04:23 Mr. Jarry wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> 
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > And if you don't care about barriers, jfs might be a good choice.
> 
> Knowing nothing about "barriers" I tried to find some info and
> came accross this article:
> 
> http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/Deciding-when-to-use-Linux-f
> ile-system-barriers
> 
> It says, barriers can not work with device mapper (raid, lvm).
> If it is true (?) then because of having all partitions in raid1 (md),
> I need not worry about barriers. Whatever filesystem I picked out,
> I could not use barriers...
> 
> Jarry

md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is such a can 
of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wed, March 23, 2011 5:43 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 March 2011 14:04:23 Mr. Jarry wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
>>
>> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> > And if you don't care about barriers, jfs might be a good choice.
>>
>> Knowing nothing about "barriers" I tried to find some info and
>> came accross this article:
>>
>> http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/Deciding-when-to-use-Linux-f
>> ile-system-barriers
>>
>> It says, barriers can not work with device mapper (raid, lvm).
>> If it is true (?) then because of having all partitions in raid1 (md),
>> I need not worry about barriers. Whatever filesystem I picked out,
>> I could not use barriers...
>>
>> Jarry
>
> md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is such a
> can
> of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.

What is wrong with LVM?
I've been using it successfully without any issues for years now.
It does what it says on the box.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 08:49:52 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wed, March 23, 2011 5:43 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > On Wednesday 23 March 2011 14:04:23 Mr. Jarry wrote:
> >> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> >> 
> >> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> > And if you don't care about barriers, jfs might be a good choice.
> >> 
> >> Knowing nothing about "barriers" I tried to find some info and
> >> came accross this article:
> >> 
> >> http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/Deciding-when-to-use-L
> >> inux-f ile-system-barriers
> >> 
> >> It says, barriers can not work with device mapper (raid, lvm).
> >> If it is true (?) then because of having all partitions in raid1 (md),
> >> I need not worry about barriers. Whatever filesystem I picked out,
> >> I could not use barriers...
> >> 
> >> Jarry
> > 
> > md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is such a
> > can
> > of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.
> 
> What is wrong with LVM?
> I've been using it successfully without any issues for years now.
> It does what it says on the box.



it is another layer that can go wrong. Why take the risk? There 
are enough cases of breakage after upgrades - and besides snapshots... is the 
amount of additional code running really worth it? Especially with bind 
mounting?

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[J. Roeleveld]

On Thu, March 24, 2011 12:30 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Thursday 24 March 2011 08:49:52 J. Roeleveld wrote:
>> On Wed, March 23, 2011 5:43 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>> > md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is such
>> a
>> > can
>> > of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.
>>
>> What is wrong with LVM?
>> I've been using it successfully without any issues for years now.
>> It does what it says on the box.
>
> it is another layer that can go wrong. Why take the risk? There
> are enough cases of breakage after upgrades - and besides snapshots... is
> the
> amount of additional code running really worth it? Especially with bind
> mounting?

There are always things that can go wrong and I agree, adding additional
layers can increase the risk.
However, the benefits of easily and quickly changing the size of
partitions and creating snapshots for the use of backups are a big enough
benefit to off-set the risk.

Bind-mounting is ok, if you use a single filesystem for everything. I have
partitions that are filled with thousands of small files and partitions
filled with files are are, on average, at 1GB in size.
I haven't found a filesystem yet that successfully handles both of these
with identical performance.
When I first tested performance I found that a simple "ls" in a partition
would appear to just hang. This caused performance issues with my
IMAP-server.
I switched to a filesystem that better handles large amounts of small
files and performance increased significantly.

The way I do backups is that I stop the services, create snapshots and
then restart the services.
I then have plenty of time to backup the snapshot.
If I were to do this differently, I'd end up having a downtime for over an
hour just for a backup.
Now, it's barely a minute of downtime.

That, to me, is a very big bonus.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Thu, March 24, 2011 12:30 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>    
>> On Thursday 24 March 2011 08:49:52 J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>      
>>> On Wed, March 23, 2011 5:43 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>>>        
>>>> md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is such
>>>>          
>>> a
>>>        
>>>> can
>>>> of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.
>>>>          
>>> What is wrong with LVM?
>>> I've been using it successfully without any issues for years now.
>>> It does what it says on the box.
>>>        
>> it is another layer that can go wrong. Why take the risk? There
>> are enough cases of breakage after upgrades - and besides snapshots... is
>> the
>> amount of additional code running really worth it? Especially with bind
>> mounting?
>>      
> There are always things that can go wrong and I agree, adding additional
> layers can increase the risk.
> However, the benefits of easily and quickly changing the size of
> partitions and creating snapshots for the use of backups are a big enough
> benefit to off-set the risk.
>
> Bind-mounting is ok, if you use a single filesystem for everything. I have
> partitions that are filled with thousands of small files and partitions
> filled with files are are, on average, at 1GB in size.
> I haven't found a filesystem yet that successfully handles both of these
> with identical performance.
> When I first tested performance I found that a simple "ls" in a partition
> would appear to just hang. This caused performance issues with my
> IMAP-server.
> I switched to a filesystem that better handles large amounts of small
> files and performance increased significantly.
>
> The way I do backups is that I stop the services, create snapshots and
> then restart the services.
> I then have plenty of time to backup the snapshot.
> If I were to do this differently, I'd end up having a downtime for over an
> hour just for a backup.
> Now, it's barely a minute of downtime.
>
> That, to me, is a very big bonus.
>
> --
> Joost
>
>    

I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has 
happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope your 
backups are good and they can restore.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[kashani]

On 3/24/2011 10:19 AM, Dale wrote:
>
> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing. I hope your
> backups are good and they can restore.
>
> Dale

	Meh, boot a liveCD and fix it which took all of 15 minutes. I don't see 
that as a failing of LVM, but of Gentoo for lack of another culprit. You 
can only roll your OS forward in so many ways before you have to do a 
little offline plumbing. May as well complain that you had to shutdown 
your machine to put in more RAM.

kashani

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Dale]

kashani wrote:
> On 3/24/2011 10:19 AM, Dale wrote:
>>
>> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
>> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing. I hope your
>> backups are good and they can restore.
>>
>> Dale
>
>     Meh, boot a liveCD and fix it which took all of 15 minutes. I 
> don't see that as a failing of LVM, but of Gentoo for lack of another 
> culprit. You can only roll your OS forward in so many ways before you 
> have to do a little offline plumbing. May as well complain that you 
> had to shutdown your machine to put in more RAM.
>
> kashani
>
>

I researched using LVM a good while back.  The reason I didn't was what 
I posted.  It is prone to problems that are difficult if not impossible 
to correct.  I may not have data that is worth much but I don't want to 
loose it either way.

People that have read these posts can't plead ignorance.

Good luck.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Bill Longman]

On 03/24/2011 11:17 AM, Dale wrote:
> kashani wrote:
>> On 3/24/2011 10:19 AM, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
>>> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing. I hope your
>>> backups are good and they can restore.
>>>
>>> Dale
>>
>>     Meh, boot a liveCD and fix it which took all of 15 minutes. I
>> don't see that as a failing of LVM, but of Gentoo for lack of another
>> culprit. You can only roll your OS forward in so many ways before you
>> have to do a little offline plumbing. May as well complain that you
>> had to shutdown your machine to put in more RAM.
>>
>> kashani
>>
>>
> 
> I researched using LVM a good while back.  The reason I didn't was what
> I posted.  It is prone to problems that are difficult if not impossible
> to correct.  I may not have data that is worth much but I don't want to
> loose it either way.
> 
> People that have read these posts can't plead ignorance.

Yet you, who "have never used LVM" *can* plead knowledge?
Uh....something's really wrong in this formula.

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Dale]

Bill Longman wrote:
> On 03/24/2011 11:17 AM, Dale wrote:
>    
>> kashani wrote:
>>      
>>> On 3/24/2011 10:19 AM, Dale wrote:
>>>        
>>>> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
>>>> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing. I hope your
>>>> backups are good and they can restore.
>>>>
>>>> Dale
>>>>          
>>>      Meh, boot a liveCD and fix it which took all of 15 minutes. I
>>> don't see that as a failing of LVM, but of Gentoo for lack of another
>>> culprit. You can only roll your OS forward in so many ways before you
>>> have to do a little offline plumbing. May as well complain that you
>>> had to shutdown your machine to put in more RAM.
>>>
>>> kashani
>>>
>>>
>>>        
>> I researched using LVM a good while back.  The reason I didn't was what
>> I posted.  It is prone to problems that are difficult if not impossible
>> to correct.  I may not have data that is worth much but I don't want to
>> loose it either way.
>>
>> People that have read these posts can't plead ignorance.
>>      
> Yet you, who "have never used LVM" *can* plead knowledge?
> Uh....something's really wrong in this formula.
>
>    

Yep, I read about others having problems and loosing data.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:19:39 Dale wrote:

> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope your
> backups are good and they can restore.

What is this "mess up after an upgrade" of which you speak?

I've used multiple versions of LVM on multiple machines across multiple 
distros for multiple years and never once heard of anyone having a problem 
with it let along experienced one myself.

Shades of FUD methinks.



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:08:02 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:19:39 Dale wrote:
> > I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
> > happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope your
> > backups are good and they can restore.
> 
> What is this "mess up after an upgrade" of which you speak?
> 
> I've used multiple versions of LVM on multiple machines across multiple
> distros for multiple years and never once heard of anyone having a problem
> with it let along experienced one myself.
> 
> Shades of FUD methinks.

http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=lvm
or if you like a bit of history:

http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL+lvm
there you go.

I like this one:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350455

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 22:07:28 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:08:02 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:19:39 Dale wrote:
> > > I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
> > > happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope your
> > > backups are good and they can restore.
> > 
> > What is this "mess up after an upgrade" of which you speak?
> > 
> > I've used multiple versions of LVM on multiple machines across multiple
> > distros for multiple years and never once heard of anyone having a
> > problem with it let along experienced one myself.
> > 
> > Shades of FUD methinks.
> 
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=lvm
> or if you like a bit of history:

Not all of these are LVM, some are only shown because they're related to llvm 
(Which is a virtual machine), but lets ignore those all-together :)

On the first page, at first glance, I don't see any serious ones that are only 
LVM.
The boot-issue was caused by genkernel not being up-to-date with name-changes.

> http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL+lvm
> there you go.

See above

> I like this one:
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350455

Looks like an issue with heavy I/O, affecting the LVM layer trying to lock the 
filesystem.

But I wonder if he's not running into a known issue (which can easily be 
worked around) where pvmove has a memory-leak with the reporting. (eg. the bit 
that checks the progress every 5 seconds, reducing that to every 5 minutes 
significantly reduces that)
However, I do believe this (mem-leak) was fixed.

Am curious what the result will be of that. Please note, I do not run masked 
(~amd64) kernels.

Kind regards,

Joost Roeleveld

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Friday 25 March 2011 07:51:13 Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> On Thursday 24 March 2011 22:07:28 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:08:02 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > > On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:19:39 Dale wrote:
> > > > I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as
> > > > has
> > > > happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope
> > > > your
> > > > backups are good and they can restore.
> > > 
> > > What is this "mess up after an upgrade" of which you speak?
> > > 
> > > I've used multiple versions of LVM on multiple machines across
> > > multiple
> > > distros for multiple years and never once heard of anyone having a
> > > problem with it let along experienced one myself.
> > > 
> > > Shades of FUD methinks.
> > 
> > http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=lvm
> 
> > or if you like a bit of history:
> Not all of these are LVM, some are only shown because they're related to
> llvm (Which is a virtual machine), but lets ignore those all-together :)

I know, I am just too lazy to do a more 'sophisticated' search.

> 
> On the first page, at first glance, I don't see any serious ones that are
> only LVM.
> The boot-issue was caused by genkernel not being up-to-date with
> name-changes.
> 
> > http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL+lvm
> > there you go.
> 
> See above

see above. But if you look only at the lvm bugs there are enough examples of 
bad kernel/lvm/whatever interaction. It does not matter that it was baselayout 
or another update that stopped lvm from working. If your system does not boot 
it does not boot - lvm seems to make that more likely.

> 
> > I like this one:
> > http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350455
> 
> Looks like an issue with heavy I/O, affecting the LVM layer trying to lock
> the filesystem.
> 
> But I wonder if he's not running into a known issue (which can easily be
> worked around) where pvmove has a memory-leak with the reporting. (eg. the
> bit that checks the progress every 5 seconds, reducing that to every 5
> minutes significantly reduces that)
> However, I do believe this (mem-leak) was fixed.
> 
> Am curious what the result will be of that. Please note, I do not run masked
> (~amd64) kernels.

oh, even better, a memory leak. pvmove even. I remember one bug where a 
commenter mentioned that pvmove nuked all data on a non-lvm partition. Great 
stuff.
It does not matter that you might not run 'unstable' kernels. Some people like 
to be a bit more update for very valid reasons (drivers). With lvms history 
that doesn't look so good. 

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:19:39 -0500, Dale wrote:

> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has 
> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope your 
> backups are good and they can restore.

I must be one of the luckiest people around. LVM messes up for many
people, yet I've run it on several machines for several years with no
such troubles.. Ditto for ReiserFS, same for XFS too.

Why does this luck not extend to lottery tickets? Maybe because that's
the one area where it is more than apocryphal that most people are
unlucky.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

An unemployed Court Jester is nobody's fool.

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Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 12:19:39 Dale wrote:
> J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Thu, March 24, 2011 12:30 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> >> On Thursday 24 March 2011 08:49:52 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> >>> On Wed, March 23, 2011 5:43 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> >>>> md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is
> >>>> such
> >>> 
> >>> a
> >>> 
> >>>> can
> >>>> of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.
> >>> 
> >>> What is wrong with LVM?
> >>> I've been using it successfully without any issues for years now.
> >>> It does what it says on the box.
> >> 
> >> it is another layer that can go wrong. Why take the risk? There
> >> are enough cases of breakage after upgrades - and besides snapshots...
> >> is the
> >> amount of additional code running really worth it? Especially with
> >> bind
> >> mounting?
> > 
> > There are always things that can go wrong and I agree, adding additional
> > layers can increase the risk.
> > However, the benefits of easily and quickly changing the size of
> > partitions and creating snapshots for the use of backups are a big
> > enough
> > benefit to off-set the risk.
> > 
> > Bind-mounting is ok, if you use a single filesystem for everything. I
> > have partitions that are filled with thousands of small files and
> > partitions filled with files are are, on average, at 1GB in size.
> > I haven't found a filesystem yet that successfully handles both of these
> > with identical performance.
> > When I first tested performance I found that a simple "ls" in a
> > partition
> > would appear to just hang. This caused performance issues with my
> > IMAP-server.
> > I switched to a filesystem that better handles large amounts of small
> > files and performance increased significantly.
> > 
> > The way I do backups is that I stop the services, create snapshots and
> > then restart the services.
> > I then have plenty of time to backup the snapshot.
> > If I were to do this differently, I'd end up having a downtime for over
> > an hour just for a backup.
> > Now, it's barely a minute of downtime.
> > 
> > That, to me, is a very big bonus.
> > 
> > --
> > Joost
> 
> I have never used LVM but when it messes up after a upgrade, as has
> happened to many others, see if you say the same thing.  I hope your
> backups are good and they can restore.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)

Backups are good and I can restore.
Usually need them when I mess things up and accidentally delete files I wanted 
to keep....

LVM may mess up if something goes wrong, but as the LVM-tools backup the 
metadata for LVM, it is trivial to restore and I have not lost any data 
because of issues like that. :)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM (Was: the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?))

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Thursday 24 March 2011 15:38:02 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Thu, March 24, 2011 12:30 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > On Thursday 24 March 2011 08:49:52 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> >> On Wed, March 23, 2011 5:43 pm, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> >> > md raid devices can do barriers. Don't know about lvm. But lvm is
> >> > such
> >> 
> >> a
> >> 
> >> > can
> >> > of worms I am surprised people still recommend it.
> >> 
> >> What is wrong with LVM?
> >> I've been using it successfully without any issues for years now.
> >> It does what it says on the box.
> > 
> > it is another layer that can go wrong. Why take the risk? There
> > are enough cases of breakage after upgrades - and besides snapshots...
> > is
> > the
> > amount of additional code running really worth it? Especially with bind
> > mounting?
> 
> There are always things that can go wrong and I agree, adding additional
> layers can increase the risk.
> However, the benefits of easily and quickly changing the size of
> partitions and creating snapshots for the use of backups are a big enough
> benefit to off-set the risk.
> 
> Bind-mounting is ok, if you use a single filesystem for everything. I have
> partitions that are filled with thousands of small files and partitions
> filled with files are are, on average, at 1GB in size.
> I haven't found a filesystem yet that successfully handles both of these
> with identical performance.
> When I first tested performance I found that a simple "ls" in a partition
> would appear to just hang. This caused performance issues with my
> IMAP-server.
> I switched to a filesystem that better handles large amounts of small
> files and performance increased significantly.
> 
> The way I do backups is that I stop the services, create snapshots and
> then restart the services.

and I don't stop much - I just cp everything on the backup disk ;)

/home is way to full? no problem, just dump all that file crap on some other 
partition and bind mount the directories. No change from user POV (that is 
me). And since /home is on / and that a 64gb ssd resizing is not a topic. That 
1tb raid5 I dump all data on? Again - why resize? I have all in one place and 
bind what I need elsewhere.

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 23.03.2011 14:04, schrieb Mr. Jarry:
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
>> And if you don't care about barriers, jfs might be a good choice.
> 
> Knowing nothing about "barriers" I tried to find some info and
> came accross this article:
> 
> http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/Deciding-when-to-use-Linux-file-system-barriers
> 
> It says, barriers can not work with device mapper (raid, lvm).
> If it is true (?) then because of having all partitions in raid1 (md),
> I need not worry about barriers. Whatever filesystem I picked out,
> I could not use barriers...
> 
> Jarry
> 


Kernel changes claim barrier support for DM and MD beginning at 2.6.33 [1].

Some support was also added in 2.6.31, 2.6.30 and 2.6.29.

This thread [2] leaves me with the impression that the same patches
providing support in DM and MD also solved the issue for LVM.

The article you cite might be correct in the context of RHEL-5.5 and
SLED-10 which use a much older kernel (2.6.24 if I'm not mistaken).

[1] http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_33
[2] http://lwn.net/Articles/326597/

Also interesting:
http://lwn.net/Articles/400541/

Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Michael Hampicke]

> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
> 
> Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
> which of them could be better for my need?
> More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
> Or should I consider some different filesystem?

No easy to answer, jfs and xfs are both good file systems, that's why I
am using both on my server at home.

JFS on my root partition and backup storage space (250.000 files of all
sizes, 900GB) because it uses very little cpu and is very fast. Low cpu
usage was important for me, because my backup space is encrypted with
cryptsetup/LUKS.

On my media storage (recordings, movies, only big files: 500MB to 15GB)
I use xfs because of it's delayed allocation which helps to avoid
fragmentation. With xfs_fsr xfs also brings it's own defragmentation
utility.

Speedwise I would they that they are both at about the same speed, but I
cannot give you exact numbers.
xfs however uses more memory (because of the delayed allocation) and if
your server suddenly loses power you can lose data.

Hope that helps you, greetings from germany

Michael

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 21.03.2011 20:32, schrieb Jarry:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
> 
> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
> journaling
> resizeable (if possible online)
> 
> After a little research I have found two candidates:
> JFS (created by IBM)
> XFS (created by SGI)
> 
> Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
> which of them could be better for my need?
> More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
> Or should I consider some different filesystem?
> 
> Jarry
> 

In the past, I used many different file systems including JFS,
ReiserFS-3, Ext2 and Ext3 but excluding XFS (so I won't say anything on
that). Now I only ever use Ext4 except for floppies and USB sticks.

JFS is a nice system, especially for larger files and resource
constrained servers. However, Ext4 has become so much better than Ext3
in perceived performance (especially when handling large files) that I
see no reason to use anything but that.

While it is still quiet young, it receives the most testing because it
is the de-facto standard on most distributions. I personally never had
data loss on Ext*, even when handling with unreliable laptops that kept
freezing or producing kernel oops.

Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Amankwah]

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On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 08:32:22PM +0100, Jarry wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
> 
> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
> journaling
> resizeable (if possible online)
> 
> After a little research I have found two candidates:
> JFS (created by IBM)
> XFS (created by SGI)
> 
> Now without trying to start flame-war, my question is:
> which of them could be better for my need?
> More stable, more reliable, more efficient, etc.
> Or should I consider some different filesystem?
> 
> Jarry
> 

I was using XFS£¬but the *rm* is a nightmare. so I suggust you to try
JFS, if your server need to remove files frequently. but i use
ext4/reiserfs now. and the btrfs is worth trying.

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Jacob Todd]

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I've been using xfs on a 1tb WD MyBook for storage for about a year now, and
even with multiple power failures, it's been fine. It doesn't get written to
as much as read to, though, and iirc i have a cron job run sync every half
an hour.

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Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Dale]

Jacob Todd wrote:
>
> I've been using xfs on a 1tb WD MyBook for storage for about a year 
> now, and even with multiple power failures, it's been fine. It doesn't 
> get written to as much as read to, though, and iirc i have a cron job 
> run sync every half an hour.
>

The cron job is cheating.  ROFL

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Helmut Jarausch]

On 03/21/2011 08:32:22 PM, Jarry wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
> 
> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
> journaling
> resizeable (if possible online)
> 

I'd like to suggest BTRFS.
I know, there is a general warning because it's a new file system.
But I haven't found any issues myself nor those being mentioned on the 
net.

I have several machines running BTRFS for all partitions except / 
(root) since , AFAIK, BTRFS on the root partition needs a patched grub

I had crashes (power down and hard reset due to X11 crashes) but my 
BTRFS files system recover fast and without any glitch.

You might have a look at  
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

From that
The main Btrfs features include: 
     Extent based file storage (2^64 max file size) 
     Space efficient packing of small files 
     Space efficient indexed directories 
     Dynamic inode allocation 
     Writable snapshots 
     Subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots) 
     Object level mirroring and striping 
 >>> Checksums on data and metadata (multiple algorithms available)
 >>> Compression 
     Integrated multiple device support, with several raid algorithms 
     Online filesystem check (not yet implemented) 
 >>> Very fast offline filesystem check 
 >>> Efficient incremental backup and FS mirroring 
 >>> Online filesystem defragmentation

BUT, you need a (very) recent kernel. The most recent bad bug when
using coreutils-8.10 (http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353907)
has been fixed in the 2.6.38 kernel but not for ext4, yet (AFAIK).



Helmut.

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Monday 21 March 2011 20:32:22 Jarry wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for "the best" filesystem for a small multi-purpose
> server with a couple of services running (ftp, web, mail, mysql).
> For me very important features are:
> 
> snapshot (will be used for backup, must be native without lvm)
> journaling
> resizeable (if possible online)
> 
> After a little research I have found two candidates:
> JFS (created by IBM)

jfs = no barriers = not safe for your data.

Use something different.

Re: [gentoo-user] the best filesystem for server: XFS or JFS (or?)

[Elaine C. Sharpe]

In linux.gentoo.user, you wrote:
>
> the best filesystem for you is the one you have
> tested and found best suits your needs.
>

I agree with that part of what you said (which is why I've stuck with 
ext3 for so long), but the rest may have been a tad harsh.

-- 
...she kept arranging and rearranging the rabbit and kind of waving to it. I decided, "this is the person I want to sit next to".