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Questions about XFS

To: xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Questions about XFS
From: clflush <clflush@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:40:56 +0100
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Hi,

I have a few simple questions regarding the XFS file system. I built a new 
small server here (commodity hardware, x86-64) and I've installed 32-bit 
openSUSE 10.2 on it. After the system was installed, configured and up and 
running, it hung while I was browsing with Firefox. The only thing I could do 
was to press the reset button on the computer. After the reboot, when I 
opened Firefox again, I noticed that all my bookmarks were gone. Those 
bookmarks were imported from my desktop machine a few days after I configured 
the new server.

All file systems on this new server are XFS because I heard good things about 
it and it generally performs better in database operations compared to other 
file systems available for Linux. However, I was pretty surprised that when I 
had to reset the machine because it hung for some reason, all the bookmarks 
in Firefox were gone, so now I have my doubts about the reliability and data 
integrity of XFS. My older server, which also runs openSUSE 10.2 (32-bit) but 
uses Ext3 as file system never had such issues and I had to reset it many 
times because it was hanging for some reason.

Am I right to assume that XFS compared to Ext3 does not do a very good job 
regarding data integrity? I know a little bit about file systems and I know 
that most file systems depend on the application to do the right job 
regarding the way it opens/locks/saves files, but in reality not all 
applications are written in a safe way to guarantee this.

Basically, my two question that I have are:

- Why did I lost bookmarks on a machine running XFS while on another one which 
runs the same OS version but uses Ext3 as file system, it never happened, no 
matter how many times I had to reset it.

- Are there any efforts currently made to increase the data integrity of XFS?

Regards


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