[Ilugc] Filesystems
- From: bga@xxxxxxxx (BGanesh)
- Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 18:16:03 +0530
Hello,
Which of the filesytems ext3, reiserfs and xfs is
the best ? In terms of performance, data transfer
speed, data reliability, security, recovery from power
failures, etc...
The "best" really dfepends on what you want it to do. I've been using ext3
for a while now on my desktop machines with no issues, and afaik, ext3 is
just a jounalling layer on top of ext2, so conversion may be easier...
ReiserFS seems to be best for a large number of small files.
I you have large files (ours are usually mangy GB in size, and we have
hundreds of those), go with XFS. Its very well designed, superb data transfer
speeds. I have pulled the power plug, literally (bad me :) on a production
machine running XFS, and it comes back online without any problems. I have
had no problems with its reliability. And feature wise, it would still be the
best (for me, that is). For instance it supports ACL's and extended
attributes. So ACL's would take care of micro level of security for you (if
you want extreme security go for an encrypted fs). Extended attributes, are
system and user definable attributes that are stored with the inode info. For
example, our playout system verfies if each file is a legal video file (as in
data format, you don't want somebody cat random_garbage > file.dv and send it
on air) and marks it as suitable for playout. This is stored as an extended
attribute by a daemon. The playout machines check the attribs to see if the
files are production ready. In fact, ACL's are stored in the system part of
the EA. A simpler usage of these might be id tags for your mp3 collection
stored in the EA. So searching is very fast on all tag info (I used to do
this on the BeOS), and if you have several thousand files, its invaulable...
Before I get micro flamed for using the non-free mp3 format, lets me state
you can use it for ogg too :) or pretty much anything...
The latest release candidate is on the sgi site :
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs
regards
BGa
--
We will find a way, or we will make one - Hannibal
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