default file system, was: Comparison to Workstation Technical Specification

[Josh Boyer]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-02-27 at 23:16 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> On Feb 27, 2014, at 11:07 PM, James Wilson Harshaw IV <jwharshaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I apologize, I guess I did not get the whole background out of it.
>> >
>> > What filesystems are we considering?
>>
>> It's XFS vs ext4 and Server WG has agreed on XFS on LVM.
>
> As a server WG member I voted +1 on XFS as I have no particular
> objection to XFS as a filesystem, but I do think it seems a bit
> sub-optimal for us to wind up with server and desktop having defaults
> that are very similar but slightly different, for no apparently great
> reason.
>
> ext4 and xfs are basically what I refer to as 'plain' filesystems (i.e.
> not all souped-up btrfs/zfs stuff), they're stable, mature, and
> generally good-enough for just about all cases. Is xfs really so much
> better for servers, and ext4 so much better for desktops, that it's
> worth the extra development/maintenance to allow Desktop to use ext4 and
> Server to use xfs?

I asked about the why on XFS for Server this morning.  Stephen and
Matthias both pointed out that it very much has to do with the work
done for RHEL7, since they went with XFS there.  That choice wouldn't
have been made lightly.  I believe Stephen was going to write up some
rationale on it.

> Basically, what I'm saying is that if Desktop would be OK with using
> xfs-on-LVM as default with all choices demoted to custom partitioning
> (no dropdown), as Server has currently agreed on, that'd be great. Or if
> we could otherwise achieve agreement on something.

I'll bring it up.  I believe the momentum on using ext4-on-LVM is that
it's the existing default, it's a known quantity, and we have the most
experience with it as a project.

> Right now we seem to be sleepwalking into a situation where server and
> desktop diverge but no-one particularly *wants* that, which seems a bit
> off.

Yeah.  It's those crazy Server people causing trouble by messing with
the status-quo and changing the defaults... ;)

josh