Mark Allums put forth on 3/7/2010 9:05 PM: > Well, you undoubtedly have more experience than I with servers. JFS is > dying. XFS *is not* suitable for desktops, you are correct.
I don't know if it is or isn't suitable for desktops. It was the default FS on Irix desktop workstations for over a decade until they were discontinued. So obviously it's not totally unsuitable for a Linux desktop. As long as one has a UPS and isn't running bleeding edge kernels, risking panics or crashes, one should be reasonably safe. I've been using Linux since around 1999/2000 and I've never had a system crash or panic. I've had a couple go down when batteries ran dry during long power outages and they came up fine. Although I was using EXT2 at the time. I doubt XFS would have fared any worse, given the machines had little load, and thus little chance of pending writes that wouldn't have been flushed. > I spend a lot of time experimenting, and a simple, stable FS is very > necessary for me. When everything comes apart, putting the pieces back > together is much easier when you can at least mount the filesystem. If you're living on the bleeding edge and crashing your system often, I'd guess you're probably better off not using XFS. > XFS is kind of specialized. That may have been true in the past before it was open sourced, when it was SGI proprietary. Since its inclusion in Linux, it is just as at home on a small business/personal server as on SGI's 2048 CPU Altix supercomputers: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388 "Based on all testing done for this benchmark essay, XFS appears to be the most appropriate filesystem to install on a file server for home or small-business needs : * It uses the maximum capacity of your server hard disk(s) * It is the quickest FS to create, mount and unmount * It is the quickest FS for operations on large files (>500MB) * This FS gets a good second place for operations on a large number of small to moderate-size files and directories * It constitutes a good CPU vs time compromise for large directory listing or file search * It is not the least CPU demanding FS but its use of system ressources is quite acceptable for older generation hardware" > And I don't really know enough about it > myself to feel good about using it. So I will concede that perhaps it > is a better choice than Ext2/3/4 for your application, and certainly a > better choice for new installs than Reiser. Look into XFS for desktop use. You may be surprised at what is has to offer. I'm not saying jump right in, but at least do a little reading and see if it might be worth just testing for your uses. I'm on the XFS mailing list, and there are patch commits almost daily. This FS is in very active development today, even though it is already very mature. The same can be said of the Linux kernel. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4b949c7f.6050...@hardwarefreak.com
