XFS In Dapper [previously posted to ubuntu-users]

[Nick Webb]

Adam McGreggor wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 08:35:07PM +0000, Adam McGreggor wrote:
> 
> What I meant to say was...
> 
>> On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 09:21:07PM -0800, Nick Webb wrote:
>>> Hi All -
>>>
>>> I posted this question to the ubuntu-users list perviously, but this 
>>> seems like the proper list to post to (I just discovered this list).
>>>
>>> I've got a couple projects coming up that will have a file systems >= 
>>> 2TB and I'm thinking of using XFS for it.  Main feature of XFS I need is 
>>> the lack of fsck at startup (fsck for ext2/3 will take many hours with a 
>>> 2TB partition).  The file system will also likely have many large files, 
>>> so XFS seems to be a good choice for this as well.
> 
> (just as a suggestion): perhaps disable fsck at bootime, via tune2fs ?

Yeah, I've had this thought.  I do this even on 1TB ext3 file systems, 
just so I don't get caught in the awkward, "yeah it will be up in 15 
minutes" which turns into 2 hours situation.

However, is it really safe to never do an fsck?  It seems that most of 
the time it's unnecessary for ext3 as the journal recovery usually works 
fine.

The tune2fs man page also states this, which I could just ignore, but 
makes me feel slightly uneasy:

  You  should  strongly  consider  the  consequences  of disabling
               mount-count-dependent  checking  entirely.   Bad  disk 
drives,
               cables,  memory,  and kernel bugs could all corrupt a 
filesystem
               without marking the filesystem dirty or in error.   If 
you  are
               using  journaling on your filesystem, your filesystem 
will never
               be marked dirty, so it will not normally be checked.  A 
filesys‐
               tem error detected by the kernel will still force an fsck 
on the
               next reboot, but it may already be too late to prevent 
data loss
               at that point.


Perhaps the right answer is to do regular maintenance once or twice a 
year on these huge filesystems.  In most cases I can find 8hours or more 
to schedule an fsck on a Friday night...

Nick


-- 
Nick Webb
System Administrator
Freelock Computing - www.freelock.com
206.577.0540 x22