Chapter 15. XFS and BTRFS

Objectives

  • Describe the XFS filesystem
  • Manage a XFS filesystem
  • Describe the BTR filesystem

XFS

Its a filesystem with better features compared to the ext4 filesystem, among them 

  • Maximum filesystem size 16 EB (Exa Bytes)
  • Maximum file size 8 EB (Exa Bytes)
  • DMA (Direct Memory Access)
  • Journal quota information
  • Supor extended attributes

XFS Filesystem Maintenance

The mains maintenance task that can be performed on a XFS filesystem are :

  • Defragmenting
  • Enlarging
  • Dumping
  • Restoring

Those can be accomplished when the file system is mounted.

Dumping
In order to dump the filesystem we can use the next utility

xfsdump

Restoring
In order to restore the filesystem we can use the next utility

xfsrestore

To read more about XFS execute

$ man xfs

$ man -k xfs

BTR

It is a filesystem with capabilities designed for high performace, one of the main features of this filesystem is :

  • To make copies of entire filesystems in virtually no time
    • Thanks to the COW (Copy On Write) techniques
    • One can easily revert the state of the filesystem to earlier snapshots
  • Maintains it own framework for adding and removing new partitions and or physical media

To read more about BTRFS execute

$ man btrfs

$ man -k btrfs