[NBLUG/talk] Recommendations for journalling filesystems?

[Lincoln Peters]

I now know that ReiserFS is not a practical option for a journalling  
filesystem, if for no other reason due to its inadequate recovery  
tools (I don't know enough about filesystems to debate any other  
technical merits it may or may not have).  So I ask my fellow NBLUG  
members: what journalling filesystems have you used, and which (if  
any) would you recommend?

I seem to remember brief discussion on the list about ext3 and XFS in  
the context of ReiserFS's inadequacies, and as far as I can tell by  
searching my own archives of those discussions  (stored on my laptop,  
which still works), I see two votes for ext3 (Bob, Andrew) and one  
vote for XFS (Kyle).  I know that JFS is also out there, but I've  
heard nothing about it, and my research is hindered by the fact that  
Google seems to be having problems tonight (how ironic is THAT?)!


As far as I can tell thus far, the respective merits of each  
journalling filesystem are (I used Wikipedia to fill in as many of  
the gaps in my knowledge as I could):

ext3:
Mature, proven, has excellent recovery tools, but slower and less  
efficient than other journalling filesystems.  According to  
WIkipedia, the structure of ext3 may lack some of the more modern  
features of other filesystems, but at the same time this simpler  
structure makes data recovery easier on ext3.

XFS:
Better performance than ext3, very mature on IRIX, but not quite as  
mature on Linux as ext3 (not sure if the difference is significant,  
though).  I also see mention on Wikipedia that it has compatibility  
issues between 32-bit and 64-bit environments (not sure if this might  
come back to haunt me or not--I've been known to replace the CPU and  
motherboard on a system and keep virtually everything else), and it's  
almost impossible to recover deleted files from it (i.e. be extra  
careful with the "rm -rf" command!!!).

JFS:
No mention of  it on this list within recent memory.  According to  
Wikipedia: "According to reviews and benchmarks of the available  
filesystems for Linux, JFS is fast and reliable, with consistently  
good performance under different kinds of load, contrary to other  
filesystems that seem to perform better under particular usage  
patterns, for instance with small or large files. Another  
characteristic often mentioned, is that it's light and efficient with  
available system resources and even heavy disk activity is realised  
with low CPU usage."  It sounds good, but might be too obscure for  
regular use (it's never good when you run into an error and can't  
find anyone who knows how to fix it...).

ReiserFS:
A few nice ideas, and excellent performance with small files, but the  
recovery tools are so incredibly weak that I no longer consider it a  
practical option.  I doubt anyone here will question me on this issue.

Reiser4:
Does not comply with the coding standards of the Linux kernel, and  
thus has not been adopted in the standard Linux kernel.  I consider  
that alone sufficient reason not to trust it with mission-critical  
data, notwithstanding the problems faced by its predecessor (ReiserFS).


--
Lincoln "The DiskBuster" Peters
<petersl at sonoma.edu>

O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
         Murphy was an optimist.

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