Quick XFS question...

[AustinChief]

Anyone here ever try to get XFS installed/supported on a CentOS 5 box?

I am having a hell of a time getting it working.

[ChiefsFanInSeattle]

Hey Austin!

It's not hard to do. You'll need the CentOSPlus kernel - First install the yum-priorities package so you can specify priority levels on your repositories:

yum install yum-priorities

Now edit your file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo - in each repository, set a priority - I always set everything but CentOSPlus as priority=1, and the Plus repo as priority=2. Any third-party repos such as RPMFORGE or EPEL get priority=10 or above.

Now, since we've specified that base and updates repos have a higher priority than Plus, we need to allow the system to actually get the packages we need from Plus - we do this by excluding the kernel from [base] and [updates]:

exclude=kernel*

Set the enabled value for Plus to be 1,and run yum update - you should see it pull in the centosplus kernel. Also do a yum install xfsprogs.

I put a sample of what my own repo config file looks like at http://www.jutley.org/temp/repo.txt so you can take a look at it.


However, can I suggest you think twice about using XFS? We used it for a while at work, until we ran into one major big bug with it. If your machine crashes with a file left open, that file will end up as a zero-byte size after you bring the machine back up. In my experience, ReiserFS3 or JFS are much better options, if you feel that EXT3 doesn't cut it for you.

Give me a shout if you need any help - my messenger info I believe is in my profile if you want to IM, or you can PM me on the board. I'll be around most of the evening!

[Bugeater]

Gently tap it with a sledgehammer? :shrug:

[AustinChief]

Hey Austin!

It's not hard to do. You'll need the CentOSPlus kernel - First install the yum-priorities package so you can specify priority levels on your repositories:

yum install yum-priorities

Now edit your file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo - in each repository, set a priority - I always set everything but CentOSPlus as priority=1, and the Plus repo as priority=2. Any third-party repos such as RPMFORGE or EPEL get priority=10 or above.

Now, since we've specified that base and updates repos have a higher priority than Plus, we need to allow the system to actually get the packages we need from Plus - we do this by excluding the kernel from [base] and [updates]:

exclude=kernel*

Set the enabled value for Plus to be 1,and run yum update - you should see it pull in the centosplus kernel. Also do a yum install xfsprogs.

I put a sample of what my own repo config file looks like at http://www.jutley.org/temp/repo.txt so you can take a look at it.


However, can I suggest you think twice about using XFS? We used it for a while at work, until we ran into one major big bug with it. If your machine crashes with a file left open, that file will end up as a zero-byte size after you bring the machine back up. In my experience, ReiserFS3 or JFS are much better options, if you feel that EXT3 doesn't cut it for you.

Give me a shout if you need any help - my messenger info I believe is in my profile if you want to IM, or you can PM me on the board. I'll be around most of the evening!


THE XFS is on an external drive array that I need to mount, the rest of the filesystem is EXT3.

I actually did all that and the centosplusxen kernel is installed. BUT I still can't get the array to mount, I get a filesystem XFS not recognized error. (paraphrase) which is where I have been stuck for a few hours. I did check and the xfsprogs are installed.

When I cat /proc/filesystems, I don't get xfs... closest I get is SElinuxfs (which I assume is SE linux fs and NOT it)

[AustinChief]

A hearty THANK YOU to ChiefsFanInSeattle, who caught that I was using yum install kmod-xfs when I needed yum install kmod-xfs-xen

Fixed it right up! Now to get the SAN up and running and done!