Let's start a flamewar about filesystems

[Mad Professor]

My raid 5 array is ready for a new filesystem?

I had ext3 before and it did it's job, but I'm looking for speed with data security?

1.5TB array built from four 500 Seagates running centos5 on 80GB drive going to use NFS and SMB to do large file transfers, mostly video editing work and mythtv and occasional computer backups.

Mostly a fileserver

is XFS, JFS or Reiser good candidates?


Also anyone know what Redhat/Centos native supported filesystems are?

[jayd512]

Off the top of my head, I remember that RHEL and CentOS support all of the following for sure:
ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, JFS, ReiserFS.

There are others, but I can't think of them right now.

[Lakshmipathi]

My vote goes to ext4. I haven't extensively used JFS/XFS/ReisferFS
Are you ready to experiement with your data ? if so , go for btrfs !!!

[Rubberman]

Off the top of my head, I remember that RHEL and CentOS support all of the following for sure:
ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, JFS, ReiserFS.

There are others, but I can't think of them right now.

To get JFS and XFS on CentOS, you either have to do a custom kernel config and build, or install CentOS-Plus. I was using CentOS-Plus until the 5.5 update - they haven't released the Plus version of the standard kernel (only xen version which won't work for me) - because I need JFS and XFS for some embedded systems I work with. Now I use a custom (current) kernel with JFS and XFS configured in. Anyway, I mostly use ext2 and ext3 file systems (ext2 on discs where I don't need the journalling). I've used ReiserFS in the past, and I think it was more efficient than ext3. I'll probably try btrfs sometime soon, when it can be configured into the kernel. Right now it isn't available in the standard kernel sources.

[jayd512]

Ah... I wasn't aware that you needed a custom build for those.
Oh well... not the first time I been wrong!

[MASONTX]

Personally I prefer a 2 drawer file cabinet with a cardboard box backup. When the file cabinet gets full, I put anything more than a couple of years old in the cardboard box and stuff it in a closet.

[curiousgirl]

Can someone explain to me why ceirtain filesystems might be better for ceirtain tasks? There are lists of properties of them that I found online but nothing that I really understood what it meant in concrete terms.

[oz]

Can someone explain to me why ceirtain filesystems might be better for ceirtain tasks? There are lists of properties of them that I found online but nothing that I really understood what it meant in concrete terms.

In simple terms, some are faster than others, some handle huge files better than others, some don't fragment as badly as others, some avoid file and data corruption better than others, and some offer more end user options, among other things. You can check this comparison chart for more info:

Comparison of file systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most of the filesystems compared there also have their own wiki page with even more details.

[Rubberman]

That's what I love about Ozar. He's just a fountain of good Linux information! Thanks Ozar for the links, for those of us who are search-engine-disabled...

[oz]

Thanks Ozar for the links, for those of us who are search-engine-disabled...

Well, you are certainly welcome - glad you found the links helpful! Speaking of the disability issue, I was disabled that way once but got over it and it's been smooth sailing ever since. All kidding aside, the internet wouldn't be nearly as much fun without a working connection and a few good search engines!