Which file system do you use and why?
 

I've always used ext3, and I realized that I really don't know why (aside from the fact that there are many tools to fix it if it breaks). After reading the Comparison of file systems unfortunately the picture really isn't any clearer. What are the rules of thumb for selecting a file system? What file system do you use and why?

(Point in case, after reading this it sounds like XFS would be a higher performance file system, but I don't really know!)

Filesystems should be chosen for their purpose. Linux supports an enormous number.

The biggies are: xfs, ext, reiserfs

Most people won't notice the difference between these in day-to-day operations. Some are better at handling large files, and others for handling large quantities of small files. There is also varyieng performance in terms of the number of files they can contain and the maximum size. If you are in a business where it matters, you'll know about it.

ext3 tends to get selected as a good all-rounder (opinions differ) and because GRUB likes it. Generally, the fs is not a significant bottleneck.

Which file system do you use and why?
 

Some time ago, I did some very limited benchmarking (very, very limited). I was interested in how much it would cost me to use a journalling file system, and the thing that was the most irritating slow down on that computer, and incidentally something that was easy to measure, was boot up time. So, that's what I measured. Note that something that was very slow on file writes wouldn't really have writes tested in this simple test.

When I tried to find out how much slower reiser was than ext2 and whether that would be tolerable, I was a bit shocked to find out the computer actually booted faster using reiser. I didn't understand this at first, but I think its mostly down the optimisations that resiser has for small files.

Now, having read a number of the more analytical/formal benchmarking stuff scattered around the net, I'm not sure how much I trust them, in as far as they give an indication of which would be good for my application. I'd be somewhat happier if I had seen any which show cognisance of the differences that can be made by adjusting tweakable parameters (noatime, tail, extents and probably more if I actually knew anything about XFS/JFS...). At least, I would have expected the 'formal benchmarking' sites to document what values they used for those parameters, but, as far as I have seen, they don't.

I'd also guess that there are some differences in performance between, say, a single 30 gig partition and a system that has, say, 10 G /, 5 G /tmp, 5 G /usr 5 G, /var and 5 G /home. I'm sure that affects performance somewhat, but it is speculation on my part as to whether it affects the different systems equally.

And, while its also nice to know which file systems have what effect on copying gig sized files from one partition to another (or a gig of small files), I'm not sure what effect that would have on anything that I actually do from day to day.

I was looking forward to reiser 4, but there are clearly doubts when, if ever, that will make its way to formal inclusion in the kernel. Reiser has always been known to be on the high side for CPU utilisation, so is probably a bad choice for very old hardware with not much cpu to start with.

In the absence of reiser 4, and as a result of good reviews, I'll probably look at xfs sometime, but probably not until I have to re-partion a disk and do a fresh install.

So, to answer your question a bit more directly, I use reiser for everything except for /boot, for which I use ext2. Well, and swap, obviously.

Thanks for your replies. "Day to day users wont notice the difference." That's the message I got from my readings scattered around the net as well. I'm interested really because I'm overhauling a few of my servers which have pretty specific tasks and I would like to improve them both for performance and stability. That and I love tweaking things! Has no one published a "semi-formal" benchmark analysis between the three biggies (ext, reiser, & xfs)?

If you use google you will be able to find such benchmarks. I've seen them on the web and read some in magazines.
If you are running a dedicated database server or a video server, then ext3 or reiserfs may not be the best choice. For a workstation, or laptop, they will be fine and may be more rebust if you on occasion accidentally shutdown uncleanly. Reiserfs is falling out of favor. SuSE is going with ext3 by default, and ext4 is coming. ( But to be honest, I do have one external drive formatted with XFS. )

Ext3--because that's what most come with, and I have zero motivation to try anything else.....and for the rare moments that I boot into Windows, I have ext2fsd installed--which lets me read my files.

The good news about Linux: Lot's of choices. The bad news? You guessed it......

Most of the options and refinements are of little value to the average user. Personally, I get so overwhelmed by just getting the system to do what I want, that optimizing seldom gets on my radar.

YMMV

Apart from the performance issues also do a search on LQ wrt FS failures. You'll see Reiser topping the charts with all sorts of (sometimes irrecoverable) errors. Mind you, I'm not trying to spread FUD here.

ext3 - fast, reliable, robust (edit: especially with various tweaks). i used to use reiserfs for most things, then started hearing about the higher incidence of problems. so i converted everything to ext3 and never looked back. for most general uses or desktop systems, i just don't see any reason to use anything else.

Most of the time, questions like these have one answer: it depends on what you need your file system to do. For the vast majority of the Linux users that I've seen and the type of questions being asked on these forums, it's pretty safe to say that most people aren't very particular in their usage of Linux. I'd further make the inference that most people will use Linux to do general purpose things (i.e., run a graphical desktop environment, browse the web, read email, some may even be so bold as to write and compile code). Unless you already know you have specialized needs, my past experience tells me to go with a file system that's stable. For me on Linux, that's been ext3. Admittedly, I haven't actually tried anything else, but I have no desire nor need to try something else when ext3 is stable for me.

I've been using Jfs for the last month or two.

We have power outages here occasionally and I noticed my operating systems would end up with crashes or errors using Ext3.

Not that I have tested Jfs extensively, it does seem robust. It handles hard shutdowns well and the operating system is very stable.

Depends on the use. Larger filesystems with large files are considerably faster using xfs. Smaller ones should benefit from reiser, although xfs is far from bad with those as well. Plus xfs is generally a lot more gentle with disks because of its caching behavior but may be a bit tricky in case of power outages (unwritten data are zeroed - the reasoning behind this was the writing zeroes would still be safer than writing random data).

I have always used ext3. Not for any particular reason other than it is easy to fix and widely used so help is very easy to find.

Sometimes the distribution limits the choice to either EXT or Reiser. Another thing would be if you want to dualboot with windows, can you access the the linux partion from that, the other way is no problem.

This is a very interesting toppic for me to come across all of a sudden the same day i come into work and they've got me looking into different file systems to see if we can improve on what we run currently for our huge database server/s. And also because we're receiving error messages on our current file system ReiserFS, it no biggy of an error but does appear not doing much harm appart from the fact its a message none the less.

In which case coming accross this thread is useful and i'd like to put my question forward of what can be better as use for a file system on 64bit machines (when we upgrade) as currently running ReiserFS wondering if there is anything better for database servers in particular considering might as well change anything during a complete system upgrade hey :p

Thanks peeps i hope you dont consider this as high jacking this thread, jst thought it was appropriate being on this subject