JFS is evil. (rant)

wuischke · 2010-06-26 14:00:57

Ever booted your system with a JFS root only to see your root partition mounted read only? Cue: Backup your important files immediately.

If you're not lucky, on next reboot, you'll wait for a fsck only to read a message to the effect of "I just nuked your /etc, have a nice day". Afterwards, only read-only mounting is possible.

It's not the first time I lost data with JFS, but in the past it only happened when I lost power and only affected opened files. This time I had properly shut down the system about two hours before the incident. Good news that I have backups and that my hard disk appears to be OK.

Nonetheless, I'm not amused and I'll pick a different file system when installing Arch again after ~3 years as a happy JFS user. :-( The worst is being restricted to using Windows, but at least now I see the big advantage of having more than one OS on your only computer.

gtklocker · 2010-06-26 14:34:34

Oh oh oh.

That put me in thoughts... my / is JFS.

Wintervenom · 2010-06-26 14:42:55

I ran away from JFS a long time ago, due to the Immortal Files of Death problem and fsck.jfs "fscking" up $HOME and /var.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2010-06-26 14:50:47)

FALK · 2010-06-26 16:22:45

Have not lost any files afaik, but I am getting rather tired of read-only mounting.

Barrucadu · 2010-06-26 16:37:05

Hmm, I've never had any problems with JFS at all, not even after sudden power loss, whereas I've had many problems with others (ext4 and btrfs come to mind as having caused a lot of hassles)

Last edited by Barrucadu (2010-06-26 16:37:22)

moljac024 · 2010-06-26 16:40:31

Interesting...I always used ext3 (now it's ext4) and never had any trouble (knock on wood)
I never wanted to try JFS, I always had a bad feeling about it

Misfit138 · 2010-06-26 19:58:40

Barrucadu wrote:

Hmm, I've never had any problems with JFS at all, not even after sudden power loss, whereas I've had many problems with others (ext4 and btrfs come to mind as having caused a lot of hassles)

My experience exactly. Never had a blip nor hiccup with JFS. Whereas ext3 and ext4 have given weird unexpected errors and agonizingly long cross-your-fingers-and-hope fscks-- especially on laptops where unforeseen power losses are relatively common.

Mountainjew · 2010-06-26 22:33:18

I never had this problem with JFS but it was very slow for me. I switched back to ext4 and it no longer takes 10 seconds to open home.

Army · 2010-06-27 08:19:17

For me xfs was, is and stays the most stable file system. ext3 was ok, but the for ever taking disc checks were going on my nerves. ext4 was complete crap here, had one system failure and the file system was broken, many empty files in /etc etc.
xfs is also slow for many tasks, but ... I like it :-)

droog · 2010-06-27 08:27:59

I've had data loss with every fs in the last 15 years or so, besides ext2.
Probably all my fault and no benefit of ext2, but who knows sometimes like when crap like ext4 first got supported(lol) there wa..
but now are fi..

KimTjik · 2010-06-27 08:45:13

It makes me wonder about the state of the hard drive or RAM. I can't see any real reason for why JFS by itself would be the convict. I've used JFS on a number of computers for several years, and haven't had any such failure. I even had a motherboard which SATA controller broke and hence made it impossible to boot the system without having the screen going mad by all all error outputs; I switched motherboard, CPU and RAM, chrooted into the system to reinstall the kernel, and after that I've not seen any issues, even though all mounted partitions are JFS.

I don't know for sure, but maybe JFS isn't that forgiving if other hard ware related errors occur?

wuischke · 2010-06-27 10:07:53

The only think hardware related could be hard drive temperature. I installed Thunderbird earlier and had it synchronize about 11.000 mails using IMAP before I shut down. I also removed Opera Mail's files. This meant both high CPU and lots of disk-I/O, probably resulting in a higher temperature than usual. (It was situated on a cardboard on top of a sofa, not exactly the best operating environment.)

I own a FSJ Amilo Pro v3205 - a fairly small 12.1" notebook. My hard drive is regularly at more than 55°C at idle (currently 57°C on Windows), so I didn't think much about it despite the drive only being rated to 55°C.

Maybe the real lesson here is: Don't operate your system outside the manufacturers specifications and trust things to just work (even if they always did).

On the software side, I can only speculate that maybe JFS doesn't like many small files. I don't know how Thunderbird stores messages, but if it's something like Maildir, it would result in many small files. I experienced JFS being slow with many small files, for instance when removing build files, but this doesn't explain losing my /etc...

Edit: Mailbox -> Maildir

Last edited by wuischke (2010-06-27 10:10:36)

ngoonee · 2010-06-27 10:24:28

Thunderbird uses big mbox files.

Cdh · 2010-06-27 10:49:21

The PC of my father has jfs as / and unfortunately he often just switches it off instead of properly halt it.

In a long time / got mounted ro only once and a simple fsck and reboot solved it. One time I had to reinstall file-roller because some files of it were broken but I don't know if this is jfs' fault.
I had jfs for some time on my netbook and there were many times that I used it till the battery was empty... Never had any problems there.

But jfs is a bit too slow for me... On the netbook I changed to btrfs + compression and my father don't have too much problems with it being slow.

Ranguvar · 2010-06-30 06:35:19

JFS has always been solid for me, as has ext3/ext4.

NTFS is the only one that ever screwed up in my case

SpeedVin · 2010-07-03 21:58:38

I use ext4 for both and I've got writeback option for my home parttition, but still I don't have any data loss
I was thinking that JFS is rock stable fs because it's used only on server's and now...

R00KIE · 2010-07-04 15:16:17

I have never tried jfs but either with ext3 or ext4 I have never had any data loss so far, the only problems I've experienced are related with the user carelessness or hardware fault.

If I was you I would try to stress that system and see if anything goes awry. Older systems have a certain tendency to crap themselves in mysterious ways so I would check the hardware before starting to blame the filesystem.

Blue Peppers · 2010-07-04 22:44:37

I have never had any problems at all with jfs. No problems at all with any FS apart from xfs tbh. I use jfs for all my backups, and I must say, I feel it has one of the prettiest fsck outputs out there. tbh, that was the main reason i chose it

theapodan · 2010-07-05 05:23:35

My experience with JFS has also been good. I converted my desktop / and /var to ext4 for theoretical performance advantages, but it isn't really faster. I didn't bother to convert /home.

My laptop is set up with JFS all around. Lots of dirty shutdowns and never a problem.

I'd suspect a hardware fault instead of the filesystem.

slvn · 2010-07-08 14:31:37

Never tried JFS..

cesura · 2010-07-08 18:07:43

Oh, I was contemplating switching to JFS from ext4, but after hearing these fun stories, I have second thoughts. ext4 has never given me any data loss problems, so I'll stick with that.

Misfit138 · 2010-07-08 18:36:05

itsbrad212 wrote:

Oh, I was contemplating switching to JFS from ext4, but after hearing [this FUD], I have second thoughts. ext4 has never given me any data loss problems, so I'll stick with that. :P

Don't believe the FUD. ;)

Loke · 2010-07-08 19:04:13

wuischke wrote:

........
If you're not lucky, on next reboot, you'll wait for a fsck only to read a message to the effect of "I just nuked your /etc, have a nice day". Afterwards, only read-only mounting is possible.
..........

Sounds too familiar; was just my /home partition instead >:( Haven't used JFS ever since.

sctincman · 2010-07-08 22:12:56

Been using JFS for almost 2 years on this laptop for /home and /, been through many power losses (losing sight of battery levels :x) and haven't experienced bad data loss (lost my entire claws-mail folder once, but that's about it)

Cdh · 2010-07-09 04:46:45

itsbrad212 wrote:

but after hearing these fun stories

Try searching the forums and you will read very similar stories about ext4.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-26 14:00:57

JFS is evil. (rant)

#2 2010-06-26 14:34:34

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#3 2010-06-26 14:42:55

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#4 2010-06-26 16:22:45

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#5 2010-06-26 16:37:05

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#6 2010-06-26 16:40:31

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#7 2010-06-26 19:58:40

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#8 2010-06-26 22:33:18

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#9 2010-06-27 08:19:17

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#10 2010-06-27 08:27:59

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#11 2010-06-27 08:45:13

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#12 2010-06-27 10:07:53

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#13 2010-06-27 10:24:28

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#14 2010-06-27 10:49:21

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#15 2010-06-30 06:35:19

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#16 2010-07-03 21:58:38

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#17 2010-07-04 15:16:17

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#18 2010-07-04 22:44:37

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#19 2010-07-05 05:23:35

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#20 2010-07-08 14:31:37

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#21 2010-07-08 18:07:43

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#22 2010-07-08 18:36:05

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#23 2010-07-08 19:04:13

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#24 2010-07-08 22:12:56

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

#25 2010-07-09 04:46:45

Re: JFS is evil. (rant)

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