[mythtv-users] CentOS vs Fedora, RAID vs LVM

[David Brodbeck]

Bobby Gill wrote:
> I do recall reading something about XFS being  dangerous if 
> your box goes off in a power outage or something similar, I'm curious if 
> that applies to JFS as well?

There are rumors to that effect, but I've never seen it happen.  I think 
they're are based on the fact that XFS only guarantees the filesystem's 
integrity, not the data integrity of files that are open for write when 
the power fails.  This is because it only journals metadata.  The upshot 
is, there's a chance that a file open for write during a power outage 
will end up corrupted or zeroed out.  This is not unique to XFS.  Most 
journaling filesystems work this way, because journaling all data has a 
large performance impact.

I've used XFS for many years and always found it to be very stable.

The only major caveat with XFS is that XFS+LVM+mdadm can cause problems 
on kernels with 4K stacks.  I can't comment on this because I don't use 
all three together.

One limitation of XFS that you may find important, if you're using LVM, 
is that XFS filesystems cannot shrink -- they can only grow.  ext3, on 
the other hand, can be resized in either direction.