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Anyone else trying xfs file system?

johnspack

johnspack

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Currently testing under virtualbox 7.04. Using standard non-efi booting, I had to create a 1mb biosgrub partition, then a 512mb efi partition, then the rest for xfs at /.
It boots faster and seems snappier than ext4. Apparently it does like a fast system for it to perform, so not suitable for dual or quad core systems....
kubuntuxfs.png


Oh and this is current Kubuntu 22.10 as well.
 
johnspack said:
Apparently it does like a fast system for it to perform, so not suitable for dual or quad core systems....
Click to expand...
Or did you mean cores... Since Xeons aren't known for being fast as far as I know....

So it should perform fast on my i7 12700K system.
 
You mean xfs on kubuntu specifically or? its not a new FS I have used it for years on production data arrays.
 
On Kubuntu of course. And I'm running it on my oced 1680, but in a vm with only 6 threads. So yes it will rock on your gen12 cpu....
Far as I know Redhat uses it by default.
 
I have not tried it yet either. Didn't know about it. I think I'll stay with EXT3/4 for now, but this looks interesting!
 
johnspack said:
It boots faster and seems snappier than ext4.
Click to expand...

Formal tests are required. Too often something feels "faster" because it's just new/freshly installed. This is especially true for Windows and Android.

I use EXT4 exclusively on Linux because there are multiple applications, including R-Studio Undelete which allow to restore data from it. XFS, AFAIK, has nothing aside from built-in utilities which are very basic.
 
Last edited:
lexluthermiester said:
How would you compare to other file systems?
Click to expand...
It has worse performance than other file systems when dealing with many small files. I've been using Linux for quite some time now and I've never seen any file system errors, although errors have happened. But the exception to this was XFS. When installing a fairly recent CentOS version, I got XFS errors in VirtualBox during installation and the installer can crash completely. You do have more flopped file systems like HFS. But XFS I think is pretty similar to HFS in terms of reliability and performance and overall quality.
 
Interesting. I installed in virtualbox as well, but used Kubuntu, and manually partitioned it. Kubuntu does not normally use xfs as a file system.
Boots and runs like a champ. Performance seems similar to ext4, and a bit less. So I guess ext4 for the win. xfs if you need far more backup utility.....
 
I am using it now on my ProBook 645 G1 as it is the default on Alma Linux 9. I have preferred it for quite a while ever since I read a comment by a kernel developer (was it even Torvalds himself?) that the devs have no idea what some parts of the ext4 code even do. I don't like the idea of entrusting my data to something like that.
 
mplayerMuPDF said:
I am using it now on my ProBook 645 G1 as it is the default on Alma Linux 9. I have preferred it for quite a while ever since I read a comment by a kernel developer (was it even Torvalds himself?) that the devs have no idea what some parts of the ext4 code even do. I don't like the idea of entrusting my data to something like that.
Click to expand...
Just because some devs don't know what parts of EXT4 coding do, doesn't make it untrustworthy. EXT4 is fully opensource and has been fully examined MANY times. If there was something hinky going on with it, we would know by now.
 
I am still using EXT4 with Pop OS since that is my daily driver. As far as 'trying' goes, well I have tried them all as any good Linux enthusiast should.
 
XFS has always scored very badly in the Phoronix 'Compile Bench'. Compilebench tries to age a filesystem by simulating some of the disk IO common in creating, compiling, patching, stating and reading kernel trees. It indirectly measures how well filesystems can maintain directory locality as the disk fills up and directories age. This current test is setup to use the makej mode with 10 initial directories.

I think this means that XFS quickly loses performance if you use it for a long time.
The result of XFS is often more than three times lower than ZFS in this benchmark, and the difference with Btrfs and EXT4 is greater.

On a single-drive system, performance wise ext4 is what the user wants.
On multi-drive systems, the opposite might be true, zfs outperforming ext4.

I think ZFS also performs better on FreeBSD than on Linux.
On FreeBSD I don't notice things slower than if I used Clear Linux + EXT4 (on this single-drive system).

In terms of overall reliability and features, ZFS is the best out there, so performance is also high, especially on BSD systems.

HAMMER2 is also excellent and sometimes faster than all Linux file systems, but it is not the best choice in 'all situations'.
 
W1zzard said:
Have used xfs in production for many years. This post is stored on xfs. (Centos/fedora)
Click to expand...
XFS is a known high performer for filesystem performance. Has been for years. It is slightly more tuned for HDDs performance wise, but probably scales well to SSDs as well.
 
R-T-B said:
XFS is a known high performer for filesystem performance. Has been for years. It is slightly more tuned for HDDs performance wise, but probably scales well to SSDs as well.
Click to expand...
Performance is something that depends very much on many different variables. E.g. which app, which task does the app do, which operating system, etc. All of these three things can greatly affect the performance of XFS for better or worse.

I don't know if XFS is as fast as what Red Hat wants people to believe. In databases it seems to be one of the slowest in existence:

Speed comparison of OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Linux hard disk - Vinchin Backup

The test is based on the virtual machine, which does not guarantee the real accuracy on the real machine. The real server can only be faster than this, just for reference. Environment: VirtualBox 4.1.8intel I3 2100 3.1ghz 4-core virtual machine 2-core, 1024m memory hard disk is st500d ATA...
www.vinchin.com
FreeBSD's UFS2 was a surprise to me. It had the fastest read time, but the slowest write time of any operating system. As a result, FreeBSD can be considered for historical data storage backup use. Or a server for read-intensive applications.


FreeBSD vs. Linux - Virtualization Showdown with bhyve and KVM - Klara Systems

Compare bhyve vs KVM to see how these virtualization solutions stack up. Explore performance, features, and use cases for FreeBSD and Linux.
klarasystems.com
Although the bhyve management ecosystem is currently quite limited in comparison to Linux KVM’s, its performance is already quite impressive.
For storage-heavy workloads, the benefit of bhyve’s emulated NVMe controller is difficult to overstate—it produced massive throughput improvements that even a long-time KVM fan simply cannot ignore.

Performance of Linux vs. FreeBSD NFS clients

Performance of Linux vs. FreeBSD NFS clients

I am seeing a dramatic difference in performance between Linux and FreeBSD servers mounting the FreeNAS server I have setup. I have searched the forums and not found a discussion of this as a general problem, so wonder what in my setup might be causing this. The FreeNAS 8.3 server has a raidz2...
www.truenas.com

OpenZFS Lands A Very Nice Performance Optimization

OpenZFS Lands A Very Nice Performance Optimization - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com
With the combination of enabled prefetch and avoided memory copy this change improves sequential single-threaded read speed from a wide NVMe pool from 2049 to 3932 MiB/s. During write profiler shows 22% reduction of unhalted CPU cycles at the same throughput of 3653 MiB/s.

XFS merits consideration only for very specific use cases where large files are involved and your application can make use of parallel I/O and even then data integrity and error detection is absent. OpenZFS on the other hand can be recommended even when all the future use cases are not immediately apparent. With the surety that if it doesn’t corrupt your data or silently gives you back the wrong information, OpenZFS is the obvious choice for your valuable data.
 
For desktop use, the speed difference is irrelevant. Desktop users should want something reliable first.
 
Easy Rhino said:
For desktop use, the speed difference is irrelevant. Desktop users should want something reliable first.
Click to expand...
And XFS meets that requirement. It is a very mature filesystem. Furthermore, work is ongoing to add some of the most important features that Btrfs and ZFS have. When that is finished there will be zero reason to use Btrfs and even some ZFS on Linux users may switch to XFS. I predict Btrfs will finally die, perhaps Oracle (Linux) and Meta will hang on to it (and those are exactly the two corporations that I wish will continue to ~suffer~ ahem I mean benefit from Btrfs)...
 
mplayerMuPDF said:
And XFS meets that requirement. It is a very mature filesystem. Furthermore, work is ongoing to add some of the most important features that Btrfs and ZFS have. When that is finished there will be zero reason to use Btrfs and even some ZFS on Linux users may switch to XFS. I predict Btrfs will finally die, perhaps Oracle (Linux) and Meta will hang on to it (and those are exactly the two corporations that I wish will continue to ~suffer~ ahem I mean benefit from Btrfs)...
Click to expand...

Yes it is stable and mature. Currently I still use EXT4 on linux servers. On desktop (Fedora 37) I am using BTRFS and it has been reliable enough. When I was on FreeBSD 15 years ago ZFS had just been released for BSD and was all the rage. What I learned during my time is BSD folks are practically a cult so its best not to question their choices of technology. Just nod and back away slowly unless you want to get into a long winded discussion on how BSD is better than Linux in every way. :laugh:
 
I have been running XFS on multiple installs (including my current media server) as my default for years. No major issues, no major filesystem corruption except when the hardware underneath was faulting (ext4 I have had issues with in the past), performance seems on par with ext4 except for smaller files and even then, not enough to affect my workflows. Highly recommend it.
 
Much prefer ZFS. Similar design goals to XFS, but much further developed and available on multiple OSes.
 
forums.freebsd.org

Non scientific database performance comparison between Freebsd and Linux

On the same hardware , SSD-Disks. On one side Freebsd with ZFS filesystem, and on the other side Arch-Linux with XFS filesystem. Number of transactions per second comparison: Tokyocabinet-DB was 50% faster on Linux Redis-DB was as fast on Linux as on Freebsd Mongo-DB was 20 % faster on Freebsd...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

On the same hardware , SSD-Disks. On one side FreeBSD with ZFS filesystem, and on the other side Arch-Linux with XFS filesystem.

Number of transactions per second comparison:

Redis-DB was as fast on Linux as on FreeBSD
Mongo-DB was 20 % faster on FreeBSD
Postgresql-DB was 30% faster on FreeBSD
Sqlite-DB was 3X times faster on FreeBSD
 
SchumannFrequency said:
forums.freebsd.org

Non scientific database performance comparison between Freebsd and Linux

On the same hardware , SSD-Disks. On one side Freebsd with ZFS filesystem, and on the other side Arch-Linux with XFS filesystem. Number of transactions per second comparison: Tokyocabinet-DB was 50% faster on Linux Redis-DB was as fast on Linux as on Freebsd Mongo-DB was 20 % faster on Freebsd...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

On the same hardware , SSD-Disks. On one side FreeBSD with ZFS filesystem, and on the other side Arch-Linux with XFS filesystem.

Number of transactions per second comparison:

Redis-DB was as fast on Linux as on FreeBSD
Mongo-DB was 20 % faster on FreeBSD
Postgresql-DB was 30% faster on FreeBSD
Sqlite-DB was 3X times faster on FreeBSD
Click to expand...

Would be cool to run ZFS on FreeBSD versus ZFS on Linux. When I compared that for NFS fileserving and local benchmarking the performance was virtually identical. Hardly surprising since it's the same codebase.
 
Easy Rhino said:
Yes it is stable and mature. Currently I still use EXT4 on linux servers. On desktop (Fedora 37) I am using BTRFS and it has been reliable enough. When I was on FreeBSD 15 years ago ZFS had just been released for BSD and was all the rage. What I learned during my time is BSD folks are practically a cult so its best not to question their choices of technology. Just nod and back away slowly unless you want to get into a long winded discussion on how BSD is better than Linux in every way. :laugh:
Click to expand...
To be fair arch users are the same breed. :p
 
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