XFS In Dapper [previously posted to ubuntu-users]

[Onno Benschop]

On 06/03/08 06:09, Nick Webb wrote:
> 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
>
>
>   

I have personal experience where EXT3 still requires an fsck to stop
data loss. It "shouldn't" happen, but on occasion it does.

-- 
Onno Benschop

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