XFS File-System Picks Up New Features With Linux 5.1 Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: XFS File-System Picks Up New Features With Linux 5.1 Kernel

The mature XFS file-system continues seeing new improvements and with the Linux 5.1 kernel is a fair amount of new material...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XFS-Linux-5.1-Features

[Chugworth]

The problem is, if I wanted a plain, simple filesystem, XFS would not be my first choice. And if I wanted a feature-filled filesystem, XFS would certainly not be my first choice. The features they add to it are just going to feel like they've been tacked-on.

[jacob]

The problem is, if I wanted a plain, simple filesystem, XFS would not be my first choice. And if I wanted a feature-filled filesystem, XFS would certainly not be my first choice. The features they add to it are just going to feel like they've been tacked-on.

I feel the same way, but XFS still has a lot going for it. It has some advanced features that ext4 doesn't offer, yet at the same time it's extremely mature and reliable, more so than Btrfs or ZFS. That makes it a good compromise. It also offers great performance in random-writes scenarios, where CoW filesystems typically suck, such as VM hosting or various database workloads. So there is definitely a place for it.

[FishB8]

The problem is, if I wanted a plain, simple filesystem, XFS would not be my first choice. And if I wanted a feature-filled filesystem, XFS would certainly not be my first choice. The features they add to it are just going to feel like they've been tacked-on.

If I wanted a filesystem with consistently high performance and stability XFS would be my first choice.

[elvis]

If I wanted a filesystem with consistently high performance and stability XFS would be my first choice.

Absolutely this. Where our company needs speed (4K raw online video editing and effects, for example) XFS is what we turn to. There's honestly not much else out there that can keep up on things like local storage setups with 8x SSDs in a RAID50 setup.

ZFS and BtrFS are fine for other use cases. But nether match XFS for raw throughput when it's needed (i.e.: when it costs money not to have it in place).

[Cyber Killer]

I also like xfs very much, there's just one issue with it... fsck.xfs

The man page says: do nothing, successfully (sic!) and that's what it does. Of course one should use xfs_repair, however Linux during boot uses fsck to fix inconsistent filesystems. This makes xfs problematic to use for the boot and root fs, as in case of a faulty shutdown they will not be able to mount or fix themselves without external tools (like boot from livecd and use xfs_repair). I'd love to see some wrapper to xfs_repair that is symlinked to fsck, so a system is able to fix the root fs during boot up.

[patrakov]

XFS also offers great performance in random-writes scenarios, where CoW filesystems typically suck, such as VM hosting or various database workloads. So there is definitely a place for it.

Well, for MySQL, ext4 was a bit faster last time I checked.

[jacob]

Well, for MySQL, ext4 was a bit faster last time I checked.

No-one is saying that XFS is the Ultimate Filesystem for Everything(tm). No such FS exists.

[mcilloni]

I'd really like to see compression and encryption in simpler filesystems like XFS and ext4. Being able to LZ4/LZO everything transparently is fantastic and one of the main reasons I usually only deploy ZFS/Btrfs nowadays.

[starshipeleven]

The features they add to it are just going to feel like they've been tacked-on.

leave this judgement to benchmarks.