default file system, was: Comparison to Workstation Technical Specification

[Ric Wheeler]

On 03/04/2014 11:26 PM, Przemek Klosowski wrote:
> On 02/28/2014 03:45 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
>> 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.
> This may be a historical bias. XFS is a large code base (*), which means two 
> things: a larger bug surface, and a larger memory footprint that used to be a 
> problem for personal desktop-type machines but less so for better endowed servers.
>
> I understand that by now XFS got so much exercise that its robustness is 
> unimpeachable.  As to the size, I see that while the latest XFS kernel module 
> is one of the larger kernel modules around, it probably is no longer 
> significant on today's multi-GB systems---the extra megabyte at current memory 
> prices is just a one cent increase in the system cost, after all.
>
> Having said that, I don't use XFS nowadays so I don't know how much more 
> memory it allocates in typical use---can anyone comment on the actual memory 
> footprint of running XFS?
>
> I am pretty sure that ext4 is a built-in module in Fedora kernels, as well as 
> in the boot environment; making XFS the default will require also building it 
> in, pretty much forever, while we still need extXX, and whatever comes next 
> (btrfs?). I am OK with that, though.
>
>
> (*) 2.9MB of XFS source code vs 1.3MB in ext4 dirs
> (**) xfs.ko is 1.3MB
>
>

You need to count the jbd2 code for ext4 as well,

Ric