default file system, was: Comparison to Workstation Technical Specification

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 26, 2014, at 8:13 AM, Michael Cronenworth <mike at cchtml.com> wrote:
> Ext4 has its btrfs conversion tool. Changing from ext4 to XFS, for arguably negligible benefits for Workstations, will make it more difficult for Fedora users to transition to btrfs.

It's an unlikely path because a.) by default we put ext4 on LVM; b.) the convert tool uses ext4 block size to set btrfs leaf size; c.) the convert tool doesn't set extref, although it easily could. The last two are a cake walk to change compared to the first.


On Feb 26, 2014, at 8:20 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> I agree switching from ext4 to XFS is likely not worthwhile.

Whether Server WG goes with ext4 or XFS on LVM, it's worthwhile for Workstation WG to mimic it merely due to simplicity because then we don't need separate installers or composes.



On Feb 26, 2014, at 8:24 AM, David Cantrell <dcantrell at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> I think filesystem variance across different Fedoras really impacts QA more
> than us.  We already support a lot of filesystems, but the real hit is the
> QA test matrix.

QA already tests the file system layouts being discussed. Perhaps the least tested is XFS on LVM only because the XFS test case doesn't specify LVM, so testers probably split and do some plain partition and some on LVM. 

If Server WG decides on XFS, it effectively increases the Automatic/Guided/easy/default installer path's "Partition Scheme" pop-up from four to five options, and that is a problem. Adamw and I are working on a proposal to reduce these options to one or two: i.e. a WG chosen product specific default, and maybe "one other" which is decided by Base WG or FESCo.



Chris Murphy