[opensuse] Crash "tolerant" file system?
I know.. This has been chewed in articles over and over.. But what are your personal, subjective, feelings about file systems? I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc. The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5. I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world.. Grateful for any ideas! Anders. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anders Norrbring wrote:
I know.. This has been chewed in articles over and over.. But what are your personal, subjective, feelings about file systems?
I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc.
The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5.
I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world..
I use JFS, but whether it is more resilient wrt crashes, I don't know. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Den 2008-11-27 08:39, Per Jessen skrev:
Anders Norrbring wrote:
I know.. This has been chewed in articles over and over.. But what are your personal, subjective, feelings about file systems?
I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc.
The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5.
I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world..
I use JFS, but whether it is more resilient wrt crashes, I don't know.
/Per
I've never tried JFS at all, but I'm running XFS on one of my own servers.. Seems like it's really fast and stable, but after a system hang, or power loss, it seems to take twice the time as a slightly bigger ReiserFS to recover during boot.. Maybe it's doing a better job in the journal? :-) Will take a look at JFS as well! I guess it's like XFS, it cannot be resized, only ext2/3 and ReiserFS allows that if I'm not mistaken? And Joop: If the file structure becomes trashed from a crash, no RAID in the world will help that out.. ;-) The RAID only covers you from hardware failures, not a trashed or messed up file system. Anders. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anders Norrbring wrote:
after a system hang, or power loss
You can minimise the chances of both of these quite easily: (1) add a small UPS, just enough to let the system close down gracefully in the event of power loss (2) nominate the machine as a 'file server' and only install minimal packages and run minimal carefully selected applications (backup etc). Run less well tested applications and/or hardware components on other machines. A RAID controller with BBU helps a bit as well :) Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 12:20 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
I guess it's like XFS, it cannot be resized, only ext2/3 and ReiserFS allows that if I'm not mistaken?
XFS has resize, too. And more: just type "xfs[tab][tab]" on a console and you will see the tools. The only combination that gives trouble (and big) is an encripted xfs filesystem. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkuh9cACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XKNQCfT1qSvETYT3LhGr48LdgGi+Um eYsAnihibNto1N+/ryL4dFjOmqqN1jnw =kP21 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 12:20 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
I guess it's like XFS, it cannot be resized, only ext2/3 and ReiserFS allows that if I'm not mistaken?
XFS has resize, too. And more: just type "xfs[tab][tab]" on a console and you will see the tools.
The only combination that gives trouble (and big) is an encripted xfs filesystem.
- -- Cheers, Carlos E. R.
True that there is a growfs utility, but it doesn't easily shrink.. Not that it's a big deal really, one can always just make a temporary storage while deleting/recreating a smaller one. However, that isn't too easy when you come up in RAID rig sizes.. ;-) Not the case this time though, it's only a couple of terabytes. Dave, there _is_ a 16 kVA UPS hooked up, and it does its work just fine.. However, sometimes systems freeze, no matter how limited the number of processes are.. And when they do, the file system usually ends up slightly trashed. Of course there is no thing as a "safe" system that can cover all situations, but at least one can chose a file system that pretty easily repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS. Oh well.. I guess this is a never-ending-discussion anyway.. ;-) Anders. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:02 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS.
It was one of the design points of reiserfs, to easily recover from powerdown disasters. It is fine to recommend UPS for servers, but home users rarely posses an UPS. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkultAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9U9KwCfYUURiWHyNEC2S2aImFbtjE8e VxcAn0gccgzjvfDceU41OlfVXgvIIf6J =hEWU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carlos E. R. wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:02 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS.
It was one of the design points of reiserfs, to easily recover from powerdown disasters. It is fine to recommend UPS for servers, but home users rarely posses an UPS.
Home users have lots of time on their hands, the long(ish) recovery times of <journaled filesystem of your choice> should not be a real concern ... /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carlos E. R. wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:02 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS.
It was one of the design points of reiserfs, to easily recover from powerdown disasters. It is fine to recommend UPS for servers, but home users rarely posses an UPS.
Home users have lots of time on their hands, the long(ish) recovery times of <journaled filesystem of your choice> should not be a real concern ...
/Per
And the system in question here will be a server running 24/7 with pretty intense load, so fast recovery IS an issue.. I haven't been running ext3 for several years, so I don't know how it performs really.. I guess for speed and disk intense use, XFS or JFS looks like good alternatives. My own experiences with XFS is that while it's running, it's fast although a bit cpu demanding. Recovery is painfully slow after a serious disk trashing, even slower than a rebuild-tree with ReiserFS v3. Then I saw a note in OpenSUSE 11 that there are absolutely no support for JFS, but it seems like it's working anyway.. ;-) Anders. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anders Norrbring wrote:
And the system in question here will be a server running 24/7 with pretty intense load, so fast recovery IS an issue.. I haven't been running ext3 for several years, so I don't know how it performs really.. I guess for speed and disk intense use, XFS or JFS looks like good alternatives. My own experiences with XFS is that while it's running, it's fast although a bit cpu demanding. Recovery is painfully slow after a serious disk trashing, even slower than a rebuild-tree with ReiserFS v3.
Then I saw a note in OpenSUSE 11 that there are absolutely no support for JFS, but it seems like it's working anyway.. ;-)
Yeah, it's working very well ... :-) Purely anecdotal evidence - I have been using JFS on our production systems for the last four years, 24x365. All of external (rented) servers are JFS on RAID1-over-*ATA, our local systems are typically JFS on HP hardware RAID1 or -5. For the bigger filesystems, we add LVM to the mix. I think I have had two incidents where I needed JFS support - one was some years ago, and I can't really remember what it was about, but Dave Kleikamp was very responsive and helpful. Second time was the full filesystem check I mentioned earlier, and in this case there wasn't much anyone could do. It was a near-disaster, but I managed to salvage most of the data. My attitude wrt filesystems - if it needs active support, it's not sufficiently mature. A filesystem that is no longer in active development is mature. So asking for active support and development = asking for an immature filesystem. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 15:37 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:02 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS.
It was one of the design points of reiserfs, to easily recover from powerdown disasters. It is fine to recommend UPS for servers, but home users rarely posses an UPS.
Home users have lots of time on their hands,
Not true. It's only that they are not paid for that time.
the long(ish) recovery times of <journaled filesystem of your choice> should not be a real concern ...
As a matter of fact, reiserfs recovers quite fast, which is the point in case. And ext3 is the worst, if we forget ext2. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkuxBoACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XAdwCff3l+J/2zEIddx5iuGtxbUk0s bMIAn18eLef1Zln1JJxMTBvX1vkfIRi0 =+god -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:02 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS.
It was one of the design points of reiserfs, to easily recover from powerdown disasters. It is fine to recommend UPS for servers, but home users rarely posses an UPS.
I've got two. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 19:44 -0500, James Knott wrote:
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:02 +0100, Anders Norrbring wrote:
repairs itself from a mishap. As far as I've seen, both XFS and ReiserFS recovers just fine, however XFS seems to be a lot slower doing it than ReiserFS.
It was one of the design points of reiserfs, to easily recover from powerdown disasters. It is fine to recommend UPS for servers, but home users rarely posses an UPS.
I've got two.
Me too. We don't count >:-P - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkvSegACgkQtTMYHG2NR9VYwgCeID4x+FUaHd7ZL4+ay67ILZla 4e4AnA+MFQaCSkvC+LaO8ySorazd2e4x =8txo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anders Norrbring wrote:
However, sometimes systems freeze
Not unless there's a hardware fault in my experience. Even Win NT will stay up pretty much indefinitely if you only run applications designed and tested for 24*365 operation. But NT depends on good behaviour by the applications. It's pretty unusual for even a bad application to crash a Linux kernel. Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 27 November 2008 07:09:23 am Dave Howorth wrote:
It's pretty unusual for even a bad application to crash a Linux kernel.
Which should be extended to X server and desktop. Right now, one needs extra computer to solve some GUI lockups, otherwise power switch is only solution. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2008-11-27 at 13:09 -0000, Dave Howorth wrote:
Anders Norrbring wrote:
However, sometimes systems freeze
Not unless there's a hardware fault in my experience.
Not true. I have had many freezes during the years caused by software. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkurXIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9V4egCgjFVLFl9K/xaO7DmavKYHAmY7 YqIAn0jWNI9oejMvDynWIyotyhS92UaG =nWSb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Dave Howorth wrote:
Anders Norrbring wrote:
However, sometimes systems freeze
Not unless there's a hardware fault in my experience.
I second that. If it wasn't for hardware problems, my systems would stay up for years. Some do too, but I've recently had a few problems with fans and disk drive cables causing either shutdowns or hangs. Filesystem-wise, JFS has only once caused me serious grief, but it was my own fault for running a very back-level system. Apart from that, we've had the odd power outage, but JFS has always recovered in about a minute or so unless it had to do a full check. (and that is what happened on the system above). /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
I use to run with ext3 with no UPS and I kept loosing little things, like files would be missing pieces of data, sometimes would be corrupted to the point it could not be read by the app and apps began to act funny leading to reinstall. One time things got so screwy, I reinstalled suse and that fixed everything. When suse switched to reiserfs, I switched and have been on it ever since. Yes, I know the support might not be there, however, it has been great for me. Hopefully, someone will pick up the development / slack and keep it going! Duaine -- Duaine Hechler Piano, Player Piano, Pump Organ Tuning, Servicing & Rebuilding Reed Organ Society Member Florissant, MO 63034 (314) 838-5587 dahechler@charter.net www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com -- Home & Business user of Linux - 10 years -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 27 November 2008 07:56:50 am Anders Norrbring wrote:
I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc.
The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5.
I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world..
Hi Anders, I have no experience with XFS, but have used both ReiserFS and ext3. Currently I am using only ext3. This has more to do with worries about the future development of ReiserFS. I have experienced plenty of crashes and freezes recently on a system, due to failing hardware. Each time, ext3 recovered both quickly and gracefully after a reboot. Combined with RAID-5, I don't think you'll have many problems with ext3. But, as they say, YMMV :-) HTH, Joop ------------------------------------------------------------ Dit bericht is gescand op virussen en andere gevaarlijke inhoud door MailScanner en lijkt schoon te zijn. Mailscanner door http://www.prosolit.nl Professional Solutions fot IT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 27 November 08, Anders Norrbring wrote:
I know.. This has been chewed in articles over and over.. But what are your personal, subjective, feelings about file systems?
I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc.
The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5.
I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world..
ReiserFS has *always* saved my bacon. The few power outages that have actually hit me, I had absolutely no problems rebooting my system and everything being just fine. I've used ReiserFS on my linux system since '00 and whether development is there or not, so long as ReiserFS is still there for me to use, it'll be used. -- When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 27 November 08, Anders Norrbring wrote:
I know.. This has been chewed in articles over and over.. But what are your personal, subjective, feelings about file systems?
I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc.
The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5.
I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world..
ReiserFS has *always* saved my bacon. The few power outages that have actually hit me, I had absolutely no problems rebooting my system and everything being just fine. I've used ReiserFS on my linux system since '00 and whether development is there or not, so long as ReiserFS is still there for me to use, it'll be used.
I agree, it's been good to me too, but what is a bit annoying is the long recovery time after a trashing.. Not that it happens often, but when it does, a 4-5TB volume takes forever (or at least a couple of hours) to recover. Anyway, after what I've read in this thread so far, I'll give JFS a "hard time" to see if I can come up with some conclusions of my own.. :-) Anders. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 1:56 AM, Anders Norrbring
I know.. This has been chewed in articles over and over.. But what are your personal, subjective, feelings about file systems?
I want to run something that is fast for use as a system partition, pretty "tolerant" to crashes from disasters like power outages etc.
The system partition will reside on a Adaptec RAID-5.
I'm currently looking at ext3, ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS has always served me good, but as you all know, support and development is going downhill. Ext3 hasn't made itself famous for being fast, and XFS is still a "gray matter" in my world..
Grateful for any ideas!
Anders.
Ignoring speed, I _assume_ the safest is ext3 with the rarely used data-journaling option. A journal is like a FIFO maintained on its own physically separate portion of the disk where the OS writes things like: I am going to update the files with XX content. After the update is done and flushed to disk, the journal is cleared. If there is system crash, then the journal applied during the next boot up. Most filesystems today implement meta-data journals to ensure the filesystem integrity can survive a crash. The purpose of data-journaling is to ensure the files themselves maintain as much integrity as possible. So when a crash occurs, during the reboot both the normal metadata journal and data journal are applied prior to declaring the filesystem clean. Ext3 is the only FS (that I am aware of) that offers a data-journaling option. FYI: I have never used it because I just assume it will slow things down. Using a fast SSD to hold the data journal would probably overcome that problem. Some of those are simply amazingly fast and can do random i/o equally fast. (Others are extremely slow to "seek" which I don't understand since there is nothing to seek.) And most journals just need to be a GB or two so the expense is not necessarily too great to consider. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (10)
-
Anders Norrbring -
Carlos E. R. -
Dave Howorth -
Duaine & Laura Hechler -
Greg Freemyer -
James Knott -
JB2 -
Joop Beris -
Per Jessen -
Rajko M.