Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 05:48:43 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 05:48:43 -0400 Received: from mta.sara.nl ([145.100.16.144]:22763 "EHLO mta.sara.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 05:48:42 -0400 Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 11:53:20 +0200 Subject: Re: XFS? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v482) From: Remco Post To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: Message-Id: X-Pgp-Agent: GPGMail 0.5.3 (v20) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.482) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3646 Lines: 93 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On vrijdag, september 13, 2002, at 09:47 , Ivan Ivanov wrote: > > XFS and JFS are designed for large multiprocessor machines powered by > UPS > etc., where the risk of power fail, or some kind of tecnical problem is > veri low. > Hmm, not entirely true. We run (C)XFS on Irix on our 1024 CPU SGI Origin 3800 box over here. Every few weeks the @$%#@ thing breaks, (CPU, bad memory that kind of things). This takes down at least one partition of the system, and sometimes a filesystem (or all filesystems). Without the journaling features of XFS we'd spend all of our uptime fsck-ing. What I'm saying, big box with lots of parts has a lot of parts that could possible break.... > On the other side Linux works in much "risky" environment - old > machines, assembled from "yellow" parts, unstable power suply and so on. > > With XFS every time when power fails while writing to file the entire > file > is lost. The joke is that it is normal according FAQ :) > JFS has the same problem. > With ReiserFS this happens sometimes, but much much rarely. May be v4 > will > solve this problem at all. > Of course, loosing a file during a crash is not nice, but often the whole job has to be rerun, at least from it's last checkpoint, so loosing one file is not a problem. The same is true for most of the desktop work, it's much clearer to a user not to find his/her file in place, than a 'maybe corrupted' version. > The above three filesystems have problems with badblocks too. > > So the main problem is how usable is the filesystem. I mean if a company > spends a few tousand $ to provide a "low risky" environment, then may be > it will use AIX or IRIX, but not Linux. > And if I am running a <$1000 "server" I will never use XFS/JFS. > A few 1000 $ do not buy you an IRIX or a AIX box with support. So, spending that money wisely buys you a nice Linux box, decent hardware and a decent FS. Even in our very well protected environment, the no-break powersupply is able to fail in the most horrible way( thoiug that happend only once in over 20 years), having a robust FS is a must. There is a world of possibilities between spending $200 at Walmart for a low-end pc and >>$5k for your low-end IBM box. For 'small' servers that people will want to depend on, a decent FS is a must. Now if XFS was as non-intrusive as FreeVFS, it probbably whould have been part of the main stream a long time ago. Unfortunately the XFS people wanted to provide functions not in the VFS layer... Now maybe if we cut that problem in two parts: filesystem and functional (dmapi IIRC), the intrusion into the VFS layer would not be taken as bad as it had been as it has been in the past.... - --- Met vriendelijke groeten, Remco Post SARA - Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam http://www.sara.nl High Performance Computing Tel. +31 20 592 8008 Fax. +31 20 668 3167 PGP keys at http://home.sara.nl/~remco/keys.asc "I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end." -- Douglas Adams -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (Darwin) iD8DBQE9gbWYBIoCv9yTlOwRAuZNAJ9G+HxDINeeeT0QTZn7Ly1tpqHXAwCeLxCd OMWrvLeT643az91jwHEq240= =zAGH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/