UFS filesystem size limit

Matthew Dillon dillon at apollo.backplane.com
Sat Sep 3 09:51:48 PDT 2005


:While not having as much testing behind them as UFS, at least on Linux,
:they aren't experimental filesystems anymore.
:
:> But seriously, the
:> structure of JFS and XFS is very different from UFS, e.g. the use of
:> btrees for almost anything. That makes them more suitable for some
:> operations, but horrible for others.
:
:Can you name the operations where those are less suitable?
:Keep in mind they don't use plain B-Trees.
:
:> As you said, the nice thing about UFS is that it performs well in all
:> cases.
:
:It might very well be that one of the Linux FS is better in all cases
:than UFS. Too bad most benchmark data available uses 5.x instead of DFly.
:Certainly you can choose a better for all situations. And Linux has also
:read support for ufs and ufs2, with experimental write support, so they
:soon have at least an as good in any case.
:
:Andy

    A friend of mine swears by linux, but curses just about every filesystem
    he tries (and curses UFS as well).  Linux FS's have a lot of hype but
    the only thing that they really have going for them is the 'instant
    reboot' feature... if you trust them enough, that is.  Reiser is 
    unbelievably sensitive to disk errors, to the point where you can lose
    the whole filesystem when something unexpected happens.  JFS has poor
    performance.  etc etc.  Linux filesystems are not poster childs.
    Frankly, anyone who feels a need to put a million files into a single
    directory gets when they deserve.

    There are two things I want for UFS:  (1) Nearly instant reboots
    (without having to depend on softupdates), and (2) an ability to grow
    or shrink the filesystem.  Both are quite achievable goals.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>





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