On Wednesday 28 April 2010 20:26:46 Rob Owens wrote: > On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 08:28:37AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote: > > Javier Barroso put forth on 4/26/2010 6:56 AM: > > > Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if > > > it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to > > > defaults if it is possible > > > > If one disk filesystem was better than all the others in all ways, then > > Linus would only allow one FS in the kernel tree. As of 2.6.33 there are > > no less than 7 stable primary disk filesystems offered in the kernel. > > Your question is a bit simplistic, and not really valid. There is no > > single "perfect" filesystem. IMO, for servers anyway, XFS is pretty > > close. > > > > Newbies _should_ always stick to defaults. Experts install with expert > > mode, and choose exactly what they want/need. > > > > I didn't write the Debian installer so I can't tell you why EXT is the > > default. I can only speculate. Thankfully the installer offers us > > expert mode so we can do whatever we want. In this regard, I guess the > > Debian team considers EXT the best choice for non-experts. > > If I'm right that EXT3 has superior resilience to power loss (see my > othe post in this thread) , then that > fact alone makes it a good choice for default filesystem. Ext3 basically syncs to disk every 5 seconds or so. Ext4 didn't, but it's possible that has been / will be put back. XFS uses longer gaps between disk syncs by default, but it is tunable. You could always use the "sync" file system option to avoid the whole issue. If that's no good enough, a simple shell script (while sleep 5; do sync; done) running as root (perhaps started from init) will fill basically the same role. Both XFS and Ext3/4 recover through journal replay, and it is usually enough. Rarely, a manual filesystem check will be required, and xfs_check is usually much faster than fsck.ext3 or even fsck.ext4. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
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