The XFS Filesystem was developed by Silicon Graphics some time ago. 1994, to be correct. I loved it because of its speed and reliability. Its B+Tree structures made it extremly fast with directories and the maximum filesize is amazing as we are talking about Exbibytes, which is more than 9 million Terrabyte!! As a bonus it is even non blocking. In other words, great work SGI guys.
But XFS also got its issues. One of them is its delayed writing of file data – if it crashes, you’re pretty fucked. In theory, it should not crash, but you know. Metadata is written first, then follows data. So it is possible that you will find zeros in the middle of your data if it crashes. The file is broken.
tante says:
I always wanted to try out XFS and see if it’s really that fast, but the idea of losing data is scary.
Maybe I’ll put it on / one day, but I guess I”ll stick to JFS for /home
Stargazer says:
To sum it up: XFS is dammed stable and cute as long things are alright. If you’re in trouble, you really are.
tante says:
/me is a chicken when it comes to thing not working.
If I get my hands on a semi-decent extra machine, I would maybe try it, but I don’t see that happening.
I’m planning on having a look at opensolaris soon though, let’s see what ZFS can do (will post a gonzo-report on my blog)
Stargazer says:
I moved from XFS to JFS due to some random crashes on my malware workstation.
I really miss the old bugger in case of speed and filesize.