Linux/File Systems

File Systems - ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs
Comparision of ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem

Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) comparison on Debian Etch

Filesystem performance tweaking with XFS on Linux@Everything2.com

File System Primer - CoolSolutionsWiki

Best benchmark comparison:
 * File System Benchmarks

Summary:

Best bang for your buck - JFS or XFS: While not the fastest file systems, both of them consistently perform close to EXT2, while using minimal CPU. XFS seems to be faster over a wider range of benchmarks, however it does use slightly more CPU than JFS. While JFS really starts to slow down with lots of files.

For I/O limited applications - ReiserFS v4, XFS, or ReiserFS v3: This category isn't as clear cut as the others, it really depends on how many files, and what the size of the files are.

ReiserFS v4 is by far the fastest file system benchmarked here, but keep in mind it is still *EXPERIMENTAL*. However its performance in the Bonnie++ benchmark deserves recognition, up to 95% faster than EXT3, and 65% faster than ReiserFS v3 is mighty impressive. Though the IOZone benchmarks are not so convincing, there still seem to be some issues to work out. ReiserFS v4 will definiately be worth while keeping an eye on, especially considering some of the exciting new features it offers. Hopefully it gets included in Linus's v2.6 kernel tree.

If your application primarily uses lots of smaller files, ReiserFS v3 is the way to go. If your application uses more medium to larger files, and not a whole lot of them, XFS would most likely be a wise choice.

For CPU limited applications - JFS: JFS is the clear winner here. If your looking for the absolute least CPU usage, JFS takes the cake.

CentOS 5 default kernel only supports ext3, not xfs, reiser, or jfs

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO.html

XFS vs EXT4
Original Message Subject:	XFS vs ext4 Date:		Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:25:54 -0700 From:		Hans Fugal  To:		Provo Linux Users Group Mailing List 

Linux 2.6.28 is just out and it includes support for ext4 which is now stable. Coincidentally, a new 500G drive is meandering its way to my home as we speak. It will be used mostly for MythTV (with 2 HD tuners and much transcoding, though I'm not I/O bound on the transcoding). I'm an XFS fan, especially for multimedia like MythTV or audio/video editing. But, ext4 looks to have many of the advantages of XFS. I haven't done a point-by-point comparison since I'm not an expert on filesystems, but the major points that they both have are being extent-based, delayed allocation, fragmentation resistance and online defragmentation, and some others probably.

XFS' big disadvantage from where I sit is that you can't shrink it, only grow it. I have wished to shrink an XFS at least once before, so this isn't a theoretical problem. Its big advantage is that it's stable and proven.

ext4's big disadvantage is its newness. Stable or not it's much newer than XFS and a .0 release at the moment. It's advantages include kernel developer mindshare, eventualy mainstreamness, and ???. That's where you come in. Does ext4 have any significant feature that XFS doesn't, that mere mortals running MythTV might notice? Does ext4 support shrinkage? Any thoughts? Hans Fugal ; http://hans.fugal.net

My main reasons for using XFS over ext3 have been, again myth/video related, when deleting large files. XFS is much quicker. Has anyone done much benchmarking with ext4 yet? If not I have a spare 250GB drive I might throw in and test some delete speeds, and other I/O related benchmarking on.

Convert ext3 to ext4
tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/[DEVICE] fsck -pf /dev/[DEVICE] mount -t ext4 /dev/[DEVICE] /path
 * 1) e2fsck -fDC0 /dev/[DEVICE]

References:
 * Ext4 Howto - Ext4 - Converting an ext3 filesystem to ext4 - https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto#Converting_an_ext3_filesystem_to_ext4
 * Linux Convert ext3 to ext4 File system - nixCraft - http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-convert-ext3-to-ext4-file-system.html

keywords
linux filesystem filesystems