[H-GEN] ext2 or ext3

[Jason Henry Parker]

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Robert Kearey <mammal at optushome.com.au> writes:

> Jason Henry Parker wrote:
> > Some of the ext3 changelog messages are *truly* scary.
> That's what happens when Dave Miller does stuff - his changelogs are
> brutally honest. This is a *good* thing.

Yep.  I still remember seeing some (pointed to by a Slashdot poster,
so one has to consider the source) changelogs that, well, startled
me.

> > XFS has been
> > around for a *long* time and beyond the added complexity (though to be
> > honest I don't recall if XFS or LVM was more complex) I can't see any
> > reason to use ext3 instead of it.
> Well, there is the fact that with ext3 you don't need to destructively
> reformat your filesystems,

I was mentally filing that under `[less] added complexity'.

> and (if you're using Red Hat) use an unsupported kernel.

You're right, that is something to take into account.  I liked running
XFS kernels because SGI is making the kernel source tree available via
CVS to help folks run their code.  Rejoice!

> It's not something that I could reccomend lightly. XFS on linux is
> also missing a lot of the Sexy Features.

Hmm, I was using LVM to get snapshots, and I noticed the XFS file
attribute stuff was supported, so I was basically happy.

> XFS is an extremely invasive kernel patch, and that does matter to a
> lot of people.

Yep, it sure is, and it certainly does.  I never had a problem I could
put down to the XFS code playing up, though, while IIRC Brad had some
bad juju with ext3 (Brad?  confirm or deny?).

> > I don't think journalling is necessarily useful in all situations, and
> > in any event most journalled FSes only journal metadata, so I'm unsure
> > of the utility.  Suggestions, anyone?

Hmm, I think my real question here was `How does journalling save my
ass in the face of disk corruption, is the hassle/benefit payoff
better than, say, RAID?'  (Of course this is an unanswerable question;
I simply saw an interesting discussion and want to keep it alive.)

> Jason, did you look at the whitepaper I posted previously?

No, I'm sorry; I posted my comments before looking at the rest of the
thread.  I'll read it before saying much more that's substantial.

jason
-- 
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| Jason's going-away do:  June 23, 2pm, Guyatt Park:                    |
| http://bigmeanie.net/bbq-annc.html                   jasonp at uq.net.au |
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