Is there any problem with using the xfs file system for the root path

Rocky Linux Help & Support
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Is there any problem with using the xfs file system for the root path of rockyinux? The background is the following link. Rockylinux9 is stuck
However, I found that the problem was solved after I changed the file system of the root path to xfs. Is it more professional to use the xfs file system for the root path, dear friends

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Hi @Tom123!

Switching to the XFS file system can indeed be a good solution for the root path in some cases. XFS is known for being high-performance and stable, especially in larger setups, which might be why it worked for you. Itā€™s also scalable and handles large files and systems better.
In terms of professionalism, XFS is definitely a solid choice, but it depends on your specific needs. For many enterprise setups, XFS is used in production, while ext4 is still common for general use cases. So, itā€™s more about matching the file system to your workload.

All the best!

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@Fekthis Thank you for your thoughtful answer!

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This was the rationale for setting it the the default fs from RedHat:

XFS is a highly scalable, high-performance file system which was originally designed at Silicon Graphics, Inc. It was created to support file systems up to 16 exabytes (approximately 16 million terabytes), files up to 8 exabytes (approximately 8 million terabytes) and directory structures containing tens of millions of entries. XFS supports metadata journaling, which facilitates quicker crash recovery. XFS file system can also be defragmented and expanded while mounted and active. Note that it is not possible to shrink XFS file system.

It is really handy if you need to expand the fs online. I guess the only downside is you cannot shrink it, if you overcommit space to one partition.

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What is the ā€œroot pathā€, does it mean the logical volume called ā€˜rootā€™ mounted on ā€˜/ā€™?

Isnā€™t it formatted as xfs anyway in Rocky 9.x?

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RHEL 6 had ext4 as the default filesystem. XFS was available. With ext4 16 TiB volumes were supported, with XFS 100 TiB (and later more).

Starting RHEL 7 the default filesystem has been XFS. So yes, the XFS is the default in Rocky 9.

Whether the used filesystems really make a difference in memory exhaustion situation is an another question.

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Yes, but I was trying to work out how he ended up with a non-default filesystem in the first place, e.g. are we talking about a non-clean install of Rocky 9.x, and if so, there could be hundreds of other things wrong with this setupā€¦

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Yes, mounted on ā€˜/ā€™ļ¼Œ due to historical reasons, we still use ext4 internally

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Iā€™ve used both EL8 and EL9 with ext4 for all partitions and no problem. Iā€™ve also used or mainly just left it as the default on any new installs Iā€™ve done, so with xfs.

What filesystem depends on your use case. XFS is better for large files. For lots of smaller files, ext4 will perform better. In reality though, youā€™ll probably not even notice the difference, so it doesnā€™t really matter whether itā€™s xfs or ext4. If it works better for you with XFS and you no longer experience the problems you had with that, then use that.

About the only thing I do other than the defaults, is edit /etc/fstab and change all file systems to noatime instead of defaults. Probably a marginal performance increase over relatime. Just something Iā€™ve been doing for 20 years, whether itā€™s ext4 or xfs.

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About 20 years ago I had XFS on ā€œlargeā€ volume. Btw, back then the ā€œknowledgeā€ was that loss of power would make a mess.

The volume was on LVM and nearly full. There became an opportunity to expand the LV, which I did (add physical disks to VG, move LV extents, expand). Then I did expand the XFS.
Writes failed: no free space. The former 1TB volume, now 2TB volume had 50% free. How could that be ā€œfullā€? Thing was that back then XFS had put ā€“ and kept ā€“ metadata, inode lists, within the first 1TB. There was no free space within first 1TB to add metadata and thus writes to ā€œbeyondā€ did fail too. Solved by deletion of old files to make space within the first 1TB.

tldr; things are better now.

One can expand ext4 too.

Regardless of filesystem and whether you do resize or not, online or offline,
the first rule is to have backups that actually can be used.

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