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FileSystemsSUSE

Understanding Linux File-Systems and a quick look at XFS

By October 21, 2013September 12th, 2022No Comments



In this article we take a quick tour of the file systems available in SUSE Linux. Each filesystem has its own advantages and disadvantages and of course some people will always favour one system over another. Ext3 is the default file system in SUSE SLES 11 currently in both SP1 and the beta release of SP2. You may look at ext3 as a generic catch all system and that is why it will be used as a default, if you do not know of any specific file requirements then this file-system should be ok. We will look at the file system tools and how we mount file-systems from the command line and from the /etc/fstab file.

There is an often over looked file system though, XFS. This was developed in 1994 by Silicon Graphics and is a robust enterprise 64 bit filesystem. It is often used for database systems or VM host where large files are often common. Unlike other filesystems, the suite of tools that ship with XFS, xfsprogs, supplies a defrag tool and the ability to freeze or pause mounted filesystems.

The video steps you though the mount command, mount options and the XFS filesystem, enjoy.