Request comparison of relative strenths of the variousjournaling file systems

[Andrew Mathews]

Mel Roman wrote:
> Thanks for your responses.  Here are some followup questions:
<snip>
> 
> Given this disadvatage, why do a lot of people on this list prefer XFS?  
> 

Personally, I use it because 1.) I've used SGI's IRIX for some time 
which is where XFS on linux is derived from. It has a time proven 
stability, speed and maturity that's carried over to linux. 2.) In my 
work environment we stress test ext2, ext3, reiser, JFS, and XFS under 
some pretty harsh loads and XFS has yet to be beaten in speed or 
stability. 3.) Userspace toolsets. XFS has a better (IMHO) toolset than 
any other. Things like xfs_growfs to expand your filesystem on the fly, 
xfs_fsr to actually reorganize the files to be contiguous, which 
contributes to it's speed, xfsdump and xfsrestore for backups, and 
others too numerous to list.

>>2. Some like myself prefer EXT3 because it is "simpler" and a part of
>>the standard kernel 2.4.x (and later) distribution.  I've used EXT3 for
>>a couple of years, and it has always recovered successfully from
>>emergency shutdowns.
> 
> 
> How is it "simpler"?  I just installed ReiserFS for my test environment
> and just had to specify which filesystem I wanted to use.  Can you clarify?

While ext3 is supported natively, in order to remain backwards 
compatable, it must also retain some of the necessary limitations of 
ext2. This will prevent it from ever being anything more than a half 
step forward, rather than a completely independent filesystem, whereas 
XFS has a proven record in the UNIX world, (as does JFS, though derived 
from OS/2 rather than AIX). Thus, it brings things into linux that are 
still not available otherwise.

>>Fewer people seem to be using reiserfs, although it is alwo a part of
>>the 2.4.x (and later) kernel distribution.
> 
> 
> Any reason why?

Historically one of the slowest, and data loss prone filesystems, though 
  I've heard that the newer versions have overcome some of the problems 
that were reported initially.

-- 
Andrew Mathews
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