XFS With Linux 6.12 Adds New Ioctls To Exchange Contents Of Two Files

[nanonyme]

I understand WriteFile()/ReadFile() can do this with descriptors opened (CreateFile() ) with the FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED by specifying the offset in the (optional) OVERLAPPED structure passed as the terminal argument.

Overlapped IO all in all is funky. You can write asynchronous disk IO with it but making it *correct* (there are a lot of corner-cases to manually handle) maybe be ridiculously hard.

[LtdJorge]

Gentoo's recommended default is XFS. It has many features that make it perfect for desktop or workstation use. Literally the only thing missing is shrinking. Shrinking is a shitload faster than backup, repartition, restore. It's a feature that it really should have. It is pretty much the only negative I can think of about it.

Fully agree

[WileEPyote]

And my whole point here is that XFS is probably not best use case for desktops. Don't make all filesystems do everything, that's all. XFS' strengths are in other areas.

Gentoo's recommended default is XFS. It has many features that make it perfect for desktop or workstation use. Literally the only thing missing is shrinking. Shrinking is a shitload faster than backup, repartition, restore. It's a feature that it really should have. It is pretty much the only negative I can think of about it.

[iustinp]

That doesn't make any sense, maybe if you told me ZFS... But even the, desktop are the most varied workloads, so any FS is fine, I'd say even having your root partition on Ceph RBD is fine.

Of course it's fine, they all work as filesystems. What I meant is, don't expect from all filesystems the same set of features (besides acting as filesystems). You want high-performance, use XFS. You want better data integrity, use btrfs/zfs. But don't expect xfs to do what zfs does, and viceversa. Or expect xfs to do everything that ext4 does.

I've used xfs exclusively for a long time (both desktop and server), and within 3-4 years of using it, I realised that its strengths are in what it does well, not what it doesn't do - namely, shrink. That's all I'm saying, if you want high performance and good server feature set, use xfs. But then don't try to make it the best desktop file system, because it isn't.

[LtdJorge]

And my whole point here is that XFS is probably not best use case for desktops. Don't make all filesystems do everything, that's all. XFS' strengths are in other areas.

That doesn't make any sense, maybe if you told me ZFS... But even the, desktop are the most varied workloads, so any FS is fine, I'd say even having your root partition on Ceph RBD is fine.

[iustinp]

Shrink on desktop is not that rare, tho.

And my whole point here is that XFS is probably not best use case for desktops. Don't make all filesystems do everything, that's all. XFS' strengths are in other areas.

[LtdJorge]

You already have backups. Not "on same disk" backups, and not for the purpose of the shrink. What I mean is you can simply restore from backups if you really need to shrink. But, as someone has said before, I think that shrink in production systems is very rare.

Shrink on desktop is not that rare, tho.

[iustinp]

There are lots of cases where the partitions need to be shrunk. For example

• add LVM, LUKs or dmraid support
• convert MBR to GPT or resize the GPT table
• install another OS
• add encrypted /boot support, or move from using the ESP as /boot to a separate /boot partition
• converting between basic/dynamic disks

All these seem home use cases. For real production, you already have automated provisioning, and backups, so you don't muck manually with servers. And if you are at home, then yes, XFS is maybe not the best thing for you. I'm running XFS for 20 years now, and while at first I also thought I need shrink (even tried to work on it), in the end I never actually had to use shrink as opposed to create new smaller LV, xfsdump/xfsrestore, delete old LV.

[iustinp]

How does making a full backup of the disk not take double the amount of space?

You already have backups. Not "on same disk" backups, and not for the purpose of the shrink. What I mean is you can simply restore from backups if you really need to shrink. But, as someone has said before, I think that shrink in production systems is very rare.

[LtdJorge]

It doesn't take double the amount of space. It does take time.

How does making a full backup of the disk not take double the amount of space?