From rworkman at tuxaloosa.org  Mon Nov 14 06:16:10 2011
From: rworkman at tuxaloosa.org (Robby Workman)
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:16:10 -0600
Subject: [Tuxaloosa] Question about /boot
In-Reply-To: <4E9DA861.4040906@ua.edu>
References: <4E9DA861.4040906@ua.edu>
Message-ID: <20111114001610.10bf2023@liberty.rlwhome.lan>

On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:25:05 -0500
"Beddingfield, Allen" <allen at ua.edu> wrote:

> Okay...  I recently kicked off a filesystem layout holy war on a 
> SUSE-centered mailing list, so I thought I would get opinions here.


Well, I'm late on this, but...


> I normally create a 500MB /boot as a primary partition, and format it
> as ext3, then use XFS for everything else.
> The source of the holy war on the other forum was my advising someone
> to configure their /boot as above.  It seems that there are a large
> number of people out there who think /boot should only ever be
> ext2....and as many others who think it should always be ext3.
> Opinions?


I think 500MB is bigger than you could possibly need, and I think
either ext2 or ext3 is fine.  I generally use ext2 and keep /boot
mounted readonly until/unless I upgrade a kernel.


> FYI, the normal layout I will do is:
> If partition based
> /boot (500mb) ext3 primary partition
> swap
> / (usually just one large XFS  "/"  for most systems- the source of 
> other holy wars) primary partition
> Depending on the role of the server, I may also do a /srv or /var
> with XFS
> 
> If LVM based:
> /boot (500mb) ext3 primary partition
> volume group name:  vgroup-system
> logical volumes:  lv-swap, vl-system-root
> Sometimes lv-srv or lv-var
> If the /srv or /var are a different disk system, vgroup-srv or 
> vgroup-var, with lv-srv and lv-var


I *hate* xfs.  I can certainly understand why you might need/want it,
but unlinks (file removals) are horrifically slow, and I guess I do
that often enough to notice the delay.  Aside from that, I don't really
have any valid criticisms of xfs.  I used to use jfs on everything, but
these days, ext4 is serving quite well.

-RW

From allen at ua.edu  Mon Nov 14 16:46:26 2011
From: allen at ua.edu (Beddingfield, Allen)
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:46:26 -0600
Subject: [Tuxaloosa] Question about /boot
In-Reply-To: <20111114001610.10bf2023@liberty.rlwhome.lan>
References: <4E9DA861.4040906@ua.edu>
	<20111114001610.10bf2023@liberty.rlwhome.lan>
Message-ID: <4EC145E2.4030007@ua.edu>


>
> I think 500MB is bigger than you could possibly need, and I think
> either ext2 or ext3 is fine.  I generally use ext2 and keep /boot
> mounted readonly until/unless I upgrade a kernel.
>
>

I just like to know that I will never come close to running out of space...

> I *hate* xfs.  I can certainly understand why you might need/want it,
> but unlinks (file removals) are horrifically slow, and I guess I do
> that often enough to notice the delay.  Aside from that, I don't really
> have any valid criticisms of xfs.  I used to use jfs on everything, but
> these days, ext4 is serving quite well.
>
> -RW
>

It has its drawbacks, but I deal mostly with SUSE these days, and that 
is their preferred FS after  Hans Reiser (murderfs) went to prison.  The 
latest OpenSUSE versions added ext4, but they  are not pushing it at 
all, and it has not made its way into the Enterprise distro (but I 
noticed it was in the last beta build I tried).  The general opinion 
from both the OpenSUSE and the enterprise folks seems to be that they 
consider ext4 to be flawed, and it is added for 
compatibility/interoperability only, and it is not a preferred config.  
The last official word I heard was that they are sticking with xfs, and 
holding out for btrfs (which they have been including as an 
"experimental" option for a while.
You are very correct about the slow file removals - they are horrid.  It 
is really the only viable option we have for large filesystems, though 
(we have some 20TB+ filesystems).  Also, for day to day operations for 
the types of VMs we host, it seems to outperform ext3.  Fortunately (or 
unfortunately, since we have to house all of it) our users don't 
generate a large number of deletes - at least not intentionally!
I noticed that RHEL added xfs support (finally!) in 6.x, but it is a 
licensed option (wtf?!) and is not supported on the "/" filesystem.

Allen B.