default file system, was: Comparison to Workstation Technical Specification

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 28, 2014, at 1:45 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2014-02-27 at 23:16 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:

>> 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.

There are good reasons to use XFS by default for Server.

I wrote out a list of reasons in favor of plain ext4 for Workstation. [1] But then I saw this little line in the Workstation PRD: "While the developer workstation is the main target of this system and what we try to design this for, we do of course also welcome other users to the Fedora Workstation."

So my little plain ext4 list is maybe ignorable if there's some good reason why developers should have LVM by default. I see no disadvantage or advantage of developers having ext4 vs XFS. So that part is a wash.

The way I'd decide this is if simplicity meets the requirements of developers, then do that, and do it with ext4. If they need LVM, then I'd go with parity with Server and do XFS on LVM (or LVMthinp if they do that).


> 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?

There are advantages for server using XFS, even for the smaller percent (?) who may end up using the default installation path. There's no negative I think of for Workstation using XFS. So I'd say make them both XFS.


> 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.

Yes.


> 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. I pretty much see it as an LVM question. If not LVM, sure ext4 meets the requirements and it's a very slightly simpler layout because we'd need an ext4 boot anyway. If yes to LVM, just do what Server is doing. Workstation isn't hurt by it.


Chris Murphy



[1] Reasons in favor of plain ext4 for Workstation.

1. It's simple to install, test, and for the user to maintain and understand.
2. Most users, especially Windows and OS X users, don't grok LVM at all and don't benefit from it.
3. It's the layout most users new to Linux are used to.
4. The anaconda team was going to use plain ext4 in Fedora 18 with newui.
5. Would simplify custom partitioning's "click here to create them automatically" as a starting point.
6. It will in fact boot the computer. The only way to get any simpler is a single ext4 partition including use of a swapfile.