Which fs for a server?

Marius2 · 02-06-2004, 05:15 AM

We are using Reiser fs under SuSE 9.0 and had more than once trouble with it after sudden power losses, because it insisted to complain about repairing faulty partitions first with reiserfsck. We believe a server should come up again no matter how it came down; so which fs should we use? JFS? XFS? Ext3?

Best regards and thanks in advance

snacky · 02-06-2004, 06:02 AM

reiserfs is for performance, not stability. Your best choice will depend on what kind of disk accesses you expect, and how important they are to overall performance.

You might want to read http://fsbench.netnation.com/

Marius2 · 02-06-2004, 06:32 AM

Speed is not that much important, but it's vital the system will alway
come up again and not bother us with manual repair runs which can
only be started locally (as the server will be in a secure area and
mostly administrated remotely). BTW thanks for the URL

homey · 02-06-2004, 06:38 AM

If you are having power problems, you might want to invest in a good UPS. That way the server can stay on for the short power drops and shut down more gracefully if needed.

Marius2 · 02-06-2004, 06:51 AM

Oh it already has a UPS; it's just that we believe that "what can
go wrong usually goes wrong" is absolutely true. In other words:
Why use a component which may fail if you can use one which may
not at the same expense? If there is one. Oh btw I'm not only asking
this because of this new server of my company; I experienced this
trouble with reiser at first at home on my private machines, where
I don't have an UPS.

future leet · 02-06-2004, 07:39 AM

You want a journalling filesystem. No question about it.

A jfs will only ever make atomic changes to the file hierarchy, meaning fsck will never need to be ran. It's still possible to loose individual files, but not big chunks of the fs.

xfs might be a good choice, but there are others.

future leet · 02-06-2004, 07:41 AM

There's a short list here
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?...ing+filesystem

stickman · 02-06-2004, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by future leet
You want a journalling filesystem. No question about it.

He's already using ReiserFS which is a journaling file system. It shouldn't take too long to replay the logs in the event of a system crash.

Quote:

Originally posted by Marius2
We believe a server should come up again no matter how it came down;

Does the system still come up at all or does it just want you to perform the extra step?

SciYro · 02-06-2004, 09:56 AM

xfs looks like it might be used for servers, (in not then jfs), dont even try ext2/3 it stinks!, if u had problems in rieserfs (somthing wich i dont) then dont use ext fs cuse when i used it for no reason i got curupt files all over teh place, it is a total mess, so stick to FS's that wre acutaly made for journaling in the first palce

stickman · 02-06-2004, 10:34 AM

Note that there is a difference between ext2 and ext3 filesystem, specifically the addition of journalling in the latter. In addition, ReiserFS is "made for journaling" as SciYro put it. It's one of the oldest journaling file systems in Linux.

Present · 02-08-2004, 10:45 PM

SciYro, did you mean "suited" for servers? i was unaware of possible litigation.

Marius2 · 02-09-2004, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by stickman
He's already using ReiserFS which is a journaling file system. It shouldn't take too long to replay the logs in the event of a system crash.
It took more than 2h two times; I had not only to rebuild the tree, there
is another option in reiserfsck (don't recall which) which I had to run on
two partitions; furthermore I additionally had to run SuSE repair tools
from the dvd, all in a very unsystematic mixture. BTW in both cases
var and tmp were damaged, even lost folders.

Does the system still come up at all or does it just want you to perform the extra step?

It comes up but not to the normal login but to this, say, repair console;
no telnet there, so no remote administration - which means I'd have to
board a plane if it happened in the field (server is *pretty* remote).

stickman · 02-10-2004, 10:43 AM

Hmmm... I happen to have a laptop with SuSE and ReiserFS, and I don't ever recall that happening to me. It's got a flaky sensor so it frequently drops out on me, but on reboot it just replays the journal. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find something...

enigmasoldier · 02-10-2004, 02:03 PM

Take a look into Reiser4 when it is stable and production ready, I'll probably switch a few of my mail servers over