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Why EXT4?Why EXT4?Posted Mar 17, 2009 19:37 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048)Parent article: Better than POSIX?
Why is this being cast as an EXT4 issue? XFS has the same behaviour, as does ReiserFS.
(Â…and yes, I've seen KDE broken after an unplanned shutdown on XFS but there was never any confusion or doubt on my mind that it was a KDE problem)
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Why EXT4? Posted Mar 17, 2009 20:15 UTC (Tue) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link]
XFS is a fast, well-written, feature-packed, mature filesystem. Ever wonder why it isn't used more?
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 18, 2009 1:08 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Sure. Here are some:
1. It was written by SGI, so most distros don't have internal resources to support it. So, they ship other FSes as default.
2. Other FSes were historically the default, so upgrading to XFS is not that straightforward.
3. Some people unjustly accused this FS of loosing data, so it is taking a long time for the FS to get its reputation back. Even if all those that did the accusing published public retractions of their unfounded accusations, it would take a long time.
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 18, 2009 11:15 UTC (Wed) by arekm (subscriber, #4846) [Link]
I use XFS everywhere (laptop, busy web/database servers, desktops) for years and the only major problem I had was NULLing files on crashes (fortunately this problem is fixed in 2.6.22+).
Otherwise I'm very happy with xfs and I'll continue to use it.
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 17, 2009 20:26 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
To the average user, it's a "Linux Problem". As in "Linux is obviously unstable crap". I know of no distros which ever planned to use XFS or Reiser4 as the default filesystem. Ext4 is presumably destined to become the default on most distros.
Users who get hoist with that particular petard have clearly done it to themselves. "XFS does it too" is really academic.
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 17, 2009 20:47 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048) [Link]
I'm not aware of any major distro defaulting to XFS there are a great many people using it (it has been the most reasonable choice for production filesystems >2TB as ext3 can't grow that big) and the major distros all offer XFS as install option today.
I don't disagree with the position that the end result is a "linux (distribution) problem" to the end user. But the problem is not the filesystem or the kernel. The problem is the dependence on zillions of tiny dot files (or a registry, *cough*, gconf) which absolutely can't be corrupt. Even if EXT4 provides the EXT3 behaviour there will always be opportunities for these files to become corrupted (software/hardware failure, cosmic ray, etc) and that the failure frequently results in an inability to even login is simply unacceptable. Quite arguably the file system which demonstrates its corner case behaviour more frequently is preferable since it means that developers will be more aware and more likely to address these situations.
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 17, 2009 22:27 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Well, eventually Linus is going to speak up on this topic. So I think I'll just wait for him to say what he thinks about reliability regressions, made in the name of performance optimizations, in what is supposed to be Linux's next standard filesystem. I predict that it won't be pretty.
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 18, 2009 19:58 UTC (Wed) by chad.netzer (✭ supporter ✭, #4257) [Link]
ext3 filesystem size limit is 8TB (I just built one this week, in fact), derived from 2**31 4K blocks. The 2TB limit is the old style DOS partition table limit, derived from 2**32 512 byte sectors. Ext4 has an exabyte filesystem size limit, and GPT partitioning (or LVM/RAID with multiple DOS partitions) gets around 2TB limit. Just FYI.
Why EXT4? Posted Mar 27, 2009 7:20 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
Actually, I think (IOW, I'll take a decent reference saying otherwise and
learn, but based on what I've read and experience) you're wrong about current reiserfs, altho it /used/ to have the problems you mention. AFAIK reiserfs' default behavior is very much like ext3's default behavior in this regard. Both of them use data=ordered by default now, and have for quite some time. (Reiserfs data=ordered was added back at 2.6.6, according to the best I can google, and ordered became the default either then or shortly thereafter.) Just as ext3, reiserfs apparently doesn't have delayed allocation, and the default 5-second-metadata-flush (which with ordered and due to the security implications Ted Tso mentions, means data gets flushed every five seconds too, before the metadata) applies to both, too. Thus ext3 and reiserfs should have the same general level of stability now, and post-data=ordered, that has certainly been my observation -- reiserfs has been incredibly stable for me.
IOW, AFAICT, the bad reiserfs rep originates in the pre-2.6.6 era, quite
Again, if you have references otherwise, I'm willing to be corrected, but
Duncan
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