[mythtv] Re: FileSystem to use for Myth (was Re:Channel change speed)

Jim Paris jim at jtan.com
Mon Sep 15 23:19:27 EDT 2003


> <snip>
> > Personally I concur with Ben: For a system partition like /boot, / or
> > /usr, I'd be conservative and use ext3, but for /var/lib/mythtv I'd go
> > for XFS.
> </snip>
> 
> Has anyone tried to stuff the system onto a CF card in an IDE slot yet?

It is a Bad Idea(tm) to use a CF card with a "normal" filesystem
unless you're really careful.  Most flash cells only last for a few
tens of thousand write cycles.  Unless you tell them not to, most
filesystems write filesystem metadata very frequently (including on
every file access, which is how the atime gets updated).  Assume your
CF card has 100,000 write cycles and you have a MythTV process (for
example) that queries the database every minute.  That's 100,000
queries in only 10 weeks, and boom, your card is b0rked.

Better to use CF as a read-only media (or mount with the noatime
flag, but be careful you're not writing anything very often!)

-jim


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