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Linux Filesystems Benchmarked

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the some-my-fs-is-more-fast dept.

smatt-man writes "Over at Linux Gazette they ran some tests on popular Linux filesystems (ext2, ext3, jfs, reiserfs, xfs) and the results may surprise you."

9 of 468 comments (clear)

  1. Not a clear winner by stecoop · · Score: 5, Interesting
    These charts make the choice of which file system to use clear as mud. What is the charts really saying? From what I gather, it appears that:

    EXT2 has better throughput

    EXT3 has better file handling capablities

    Reiser has better search ablity

    XFS has better delete capablities

    JFS may be a better choice in regards to file manipulation Subject to debate of course...

  2. It works for mine! by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been using ReiserFS _EXCLUSIVELY_ since about 2.4.11 and I've never had a single problem. It's important to format with the defaults and not specify 'special' arguments to mkreiserfs or you can run into trouble.

    I've got three systems currently running reiser on Gentoo, from my PowerPC/SCSI/NFS/Samba file/print server to the ancient Compaq laptop with a 4GB drive. I've never had as much as a hiccup from ReiserFS.

    Under what circumstances did you lose data?

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  3. So why does RedHat/Fedora continue to push EXT3? by jaylee7877 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've never understood why they don't move to ReiserFS, at least for new installations. With Fedora you have to use a kernel option to enable ReiserFS installation and with RHEL you can't install to a ReiserFS root, even the reiserfs kernel module is in their kernel-unsupported RPM which means don't call for help. I love RH but they need to get the ball rolling on this one!

  4. What about SoftUpdates? by mi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From FreeBSD, that is... Would be nice to see that compared to Linux' FS-es. As in this earlier benchmark (PDF).

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  5. Purpose of Journalling by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What was the reason for the panic? I've been running my system HARD for years without any panics.

    If your hardware or kernel has problems you can hardly blame a filesystem that's expressly designed for high-reliability hardware for data loss.

    'journalling' is not any better than none when it comes to flaky hardware or a badly compiled kernel. All it means is that you don't have to wait an hour for fsck to run. The whole point of a journalling FS is that it 'knows' what files are suspect after a major outage and it quarantines them, it's not any better at preventing them from being corrupted.

    All in all, I can say that Linux an other Unices are VERY sensitive to improper halts/panics/shutdowns. I've hosed several OS X machines by not exiting gracefully, and several Linux boxes too. Your number-one priority when setting up a system is to do what it takes to keep it from crashing, ever.

    When I built my desktop I carefully selected components that were 100% Linux-compatible so I wouldn't have issues like the ones you described.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  6. Re:So why does RedHat/Fedora continue to push EXT3 by flaming-opus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, the simplest answer is that Stephen Tweedie is their filesystem guru, so why not use his baby in their OS. However, that's not the real answer. SCT is a clever guy, and mature enough to not let pride get in the way of the best possible system. (a similar question: Why does sun still use UFS?) For Redhat, EXT3 is probably the best general purpose filesystem, particularly for the root drive. Redhat is interested in selling on servers, where the root filesystem is not the bottleneck. You install the OS onto EXT3, which has decent performance and is very mature. Then you install your database / exported directories / mail spool / whatever onto the filesystem that is best for that job.

    Ext3 is a very close cousin to Ext2, which has been around for a very long time, and changes very slowly. Reiser has grown and changed a LOT in the last three years, including some metadata changes that effect on-disk structures. Though it has stabalized lately, Redhat is correct to be cautious. XFS and JFS, though very mature filesystems on other OSes, have only recently become tightly integrated with the Linux kernel. Though technically controlled by the linux kernel community, all three of these other filesystems are really controlled by little cabals of people within IBM/SGI/ and then Hans Reiser. While these groups try to be transparent in their development process, Ext3 is very transparent in its development and direction.

    One other tremendous advantage that Ext3 inherits from Ext2 is a fast, versatile, and effective fsck program. Journals are great in the event of power failures. However, they do not protect against Windows, or a faulty fibre channel driver, or uninformed sysadmin who accidently writes over the first 1 MB of the disk. Fsck.Ext2 is one of the best around.

  7. Re:Defragmenting filesystem? by pclminion · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The old-school trick is to back up the file system to tape, reformat the disk and do a restore.

    These days you could just use a second disk. It would be faster, too.

    I wonder if there's some way for a RAID to constantly, dynamically optimize itself. After all, it's striped and redundant, there must be all kinds of funky tricks you can play to reorganize data on the fly...

  8. They really should have benchmarked V4 not just V3 by hansreiser · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ReiserFS V3 is being obsoleted by V4, which is 2-5x times faster.

    You can see benchmarks of it at www.namesys.com/benchmarks.html

  9. Re:So why does RedHat/Fedora continue to push EXT3 by Empty+Threats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sun uses UFS because it is still the best filesystem for a root filesystem.

    • It supports software mirroring of the root FS in solaris.
    • It's backwards and forwards compatible.
    • It does not require any license fees, since it's been worked on in-house.
    • It already supports logging, which provides the benefits of journalling and a substantial performance boost.
    • UFS also has alternate superblocks, like all modern filesystems. (Including JFS and XFS!)

    A more interesting question is: Why do Linux zealots incessantly rag on UFS?